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CHURCH FINANCE 
AND SOCIAL ETHICS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



CHURCH FINANCE 
AND SOCIAL ETHICS 



BY 
FRANCIS JOHN McCONNELL 

Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church 



J13eto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1920 

All rights reserved 



<i 



Copyright, 1920, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1920. 



©CI.A604188 



NOV 17 1920 






CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Preliminary < . . 1 

II The Church as Owner . . . .... .16 

III The Church as Solicitor 30 

IV The Church as Philanthropist 44 

V Christian Expenditure 59 

VI The Church as Investor 76 

VII The Church as Employer 91 

VIII Missionary Effort and Financial Policy . . 105 

IX The Body of Christ 118 



CHURCH FINANCE AND 
SOCIAL ETHICS 



CHAPTER I 

PRELIMINARY 

It requires only slight familiarity with the news- 
papers to discern the part which appeals for large funds 
are playing in present-day church activities. Whether 
it be that the unprecedented response of the American 
public to philanthropic calls during the Great War be- 
got a nation-wide habit of extraordinary generosity, or 
whether the forced prosperity of a country fairly wel- 
tering in gold made the public kindly toward Christian 
appeals in enormous terms, or whether the desperate 
plight in which European humanity found itself dur- 
ing and at the close of the Great War laid a new bur- 
den upon the Christian conscience, the fact is that the 
Protestant churches have asked and are asking the Amer- 
ican people for sums which would have seemed out of all 
reason ten years ago. One denomination has already 
received pledges to the total of over one-hundred mil- 
lions of dollars, another is undertaking a campaign for 
one hundred millions, another has secured seventy-five 
millions, and still another fifty millions, — all this since 
the close of the World War. 

1 



2 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

"We are to-day praying for the union of the separate 
Protestant denominations into one organic, or at least 
federated, whole. The advantages which will come from 
such union for more direct and simple phrasing of the 
Christian faith are obvious. Obvious also is the elimina- 
tion of the scandal of a divided Protestantism giving 
itself to competitive struggle at home and abroad. Very 
few of us, however, have faced the duty of thinking 
through the implications of the fact that such union 
will pour into some central treasury masses of money 
beyond all our present calculations. The responsibili- 
ties which will be lodged in that centralized office for 
proper coordination and correlation in the handling of 
money have not yet been taken into the account, nor 
have we stopped to plan for the perils involved for the 
Church in the very possibility that such sums will soon 
come under its control. 

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, — the 
worldly-wise tell us and they counsel us not to build 
the bridges before we get to the rivers. A deeper wis- 
dom, however, knows that bridge-building is seldom most 
successful when carried forward extemporaneously. 
The engineer is always gratified to know beforehand 
whether the stream can be bridged at all, and what 
material is at hand for the construction of bridges. It 
is especially imperative that we cast a glance ahead in 
view of the tendency of discussions about Church- 
union so to focus themselves on the specifically ecclesi- 
astical features that some apparently commonplace issues 
are in the end left to take a haphazard turn. 

For example, representatives of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church and of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
South, recently agreed upon a plan of union to be sub- 



PRELIMINARY 3 

mitted to the supreme legislative bodies of both churches 
for adoption at the earliest feasible date. The discus- 
sion over Methodist union has gone on for years until the 
consummation seems — according to some prophets — al- 
most in sight, involving as it does the creation of sub- 
stantially a new church with over six million members. 
A proposed constitution for the new body has been 
outlined. Most elaborate precautions have been taken to 
protect the rights of the Southern minority and to re- 
tain the loyalty of the negro, and to forestall autocratic- 
ally-minded bishops from seizing too much power; all 
of which is as it should be. There is not in the instru- 
ment itself, however, any save the most casual hint as to 
how the enormous sums of money raised by such an or- 
ganization are to be handled. I am heartily in favor 
of the union of Methodism, but as the proposed constitu- 
tion now stands it makes possible a financial concentra- 
tion beyond anything in the history of Protestantism; 
not because anybody intends or desires such a result but 
because this, — an apparently non-ecclesiastical "detail," 
— has been allowed to take care of itself. A wiser policy 
would keep all such grave possibilities out in the open 
from the beginning. 

We apologize for uttering such commonplace as that 
immense physical resources lodged in the hands even 
of the best-intentioned Boards are equivalent to im- 
mense grants of power. For illustration we may look at 
two foundations which to-day are influencing the educa- 
tional institutions of the United States. We refer to 
the funds coming from the Carnegie properties on the 
one hand and the Rockefeller properties on the other. 
It is not our business here to enter into a discussion of 
the industrial processes by which the Carnegie and the 



4 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

Rockefeller interests came to success. Very likely the 
laws to-day would not permit financial activities of the 
sort displayed forty years ago by Mr. Carnegie or by 
Mr. Rockefeller. Probably each pioneer of industry was 
as good or as bad as the other. In their defense it may 
be said that the social consequences of control of rail- 
roads and legislatures and even of public opinion by 
dominant financial groups had not in their day been 
thought through. Moreover the past is past and a re- 
spectable portion of the funds of each magnate is devoted 
to the improvement of education in the United States. 
We are firmly of the conviction that both the Carnegie 
fund and the Rockefeller fund for education have been 
productive of far-reaching good. The Rockefeller fund 
has, so far as we know, never been used in a meddling 
or tinkering spirit. The grants of money seem to have 
been voted according to sound educational policy. As 
to the Carnegie fund perhaps a careful judgment would 
not be so favorable. The first announcement of the 
Carnegie purpose led to a frantic scrambling by presi- 
dents of denominational colleges to cut loose from church 
control or to lengthen their tether far enough to share 
in the contemplated financial blessings. The oracular 
utterances of some officers of the Foundation also seemed 
to be based on the assumption that control over such a 
fund made for final authority on all subjects ranging 
from pensions and life insurance to politics and religion, 
though this was incidental and added to the gayety of 
disinterested persons. On the whole, however, the Car- 
negie policy on its strictly educational side was probably 
sound enough. Granting the worthiness of the inten- 
tions of both founders and the correctness of the methods 
with which the trustees work, the fact remains that at 



PRELIMINARY 5 

least for a generation or two these aggregations of money 
will be a potent factor in decreeing what colleges in the 
United States shall survive or perish. It will be under- 
stood that we are not deploring the existence of such 
funds. We are simply stating the self-evident as to their 
power. 

There is no reason to suppose that the piling up of 
riches in the treasuries of the Protestant churches or of 
the Protestant Church, when union comes, will generate 
energy any less compelling. The administrators of the 
finances, — who will probably go by the innocent title of 
secretaries — will have in their hands titanic enginery 
whose effects will be felt through the decades for good or 
ill. The secretaryships are inevitable — as is their tre- 
mendous power. Public understanding of such power, 
however, is the first step toward keeping it humble and 
tractable. 

In addition there are wider considerations of serious 
import. Our fathers were declared to have won a not- 
able victory when they achieved a separation of Church 
and State. Their sure discernment told them that only 
harm could result if the State attempted to control the 
Church or if the Church sought to manage the State 
through any other channel than reasonable persuasion. 
In recent years, however, we have learned that no matter 
what the form of government at a given time, the 
economic forces of that time try to get hold of and con- 
trol King and Parliament or President and Congress. 
This is not to suggest anything necessarily wicked. 
Economic interests should have place in governmental 
policies. Economics have more to do with the life of 
man than any other interests. The possibility of such 
control, however, makes likely an invisible government 



6 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

behind the visible. Much of the harm could be done 
away with if the economic forces were definitely labeled 
so that we could watch them at work. If, for example, a 
railroad manipulates the political machinery of a state 
so as to send to the senate of the United States a repre- 
sentative of the railroad the peril would be diminished 
if the newly elected senator could take his oath as the 
senator from the railroad. Then we would at least know 
where we were and what to expect. There is a shrewd 
jest now going the rounds to the effect that the United 
States is Bolshevist to the extent of being ruled by a 
congress which is a soviet of lawyers. If the lawyers 
are just lawyers our plight is not so serious as it is if 
the lawyers are agents of screened or masked financial 
giants. 

Now this old alliance between Church and State which 
our fathers thought dangerous can easily return to 
plague us if both Church and State in their organized 
capacities are too closely dependent on economic interests 
which may control both Church and State. It is signifi- 
cant that in the vexing days since 1914, when representa- 
tives of this or that religious group have dared to speak 
out against any war policies which have seemed un- 
christian, the first patriots to be shocked and outraged 
have been spokesmen of financial interests who have 
often called out that government should proceed against 
such potential treason. Better have Church and State 
wrangling with one another as to which is entitled to 
authority over the other than to have both jerked like 
puppets by a back-lying and irresponsible economic 
master. 

A second general consideration arises out of the pos- 
sibility of accumulated resources tying the Church to 



PRELIMINARY 7 

an established social and industrial order, whatever that 
order may be. Human nature is prone to identify what- 
ever is with what ought to be. This is often true when 
persons have passed with middle age into prosperity. 
Radical critics of organized Christianity often remind us 
that the Church is just about a generation behind the 
times. This is measurably true, for the good and suffi- 
cient reason that the ministers and laymen now in control 
of the Church were born about a generation ago. Having 
attained to a degree of success through the methods in 
which they were trained, they believe in the superiority 
of these processes and are quite likely to identify a social 
or industrial state at any one moment with the eternal 
verities of the Christian revelation. Here is for Chris- 
tianity an ever-present and serious peril. We need not 
be radicals to discern the manifest flaws in the industrial 
system of the year 1920. Suppose we grant for argu- 
ment's sake that as an instrument for production of 
wealth the capitalistic system is the best that the world 
has seen. We could hardly say much for the claim, 
however, that the capitalistic system has been conspicu- 
ously successful in the equitable distribution of wealth. 
It may be that a producer will not exert himself to the 
utmost unless society gives him the right to bequeath his 
property to a great-grandson whom he may never see, — • 
and who, when he arrives, may be a knave or a fool. 
Conceding this far from self-evident truth, we can not 
maintain with much vigor that our present system of dis- 
tribution is all that it ought to be. Then if the mildest re- 
forms are in order we ought to have an institutional 
Christianity which can help toward charting the course 
which the reform is to take. The difficulty of render- 
ing such service if the organized Church is rooted in and 



8 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

interlaced with the established order by the possession 
of great wealth is altogether too patent. 

A third consideration is the possibility of the 
Church's becoming conformed to secular standards by 
anxiety over her earthly possessions, or by her uncon- 
scious carrying over into the temple a mood and spirit 
begotten in the business office. In a notable address, 
while he was still President of Princeton, Woodrow 
Wilson once called attention to the deleterious effect of 
the scientific temper of the age on the pursuit of the 
knowledge of higher human values. In substance he 
said that it was as if the noxious gases from a laboratory 
had escaped into the quiet retreat of the brooding phil- 
osopher and were choking him with their poison. If 
this be true as to scholarship, how much more imminent 
is the peril from the deadly fumes of modern industrial- 
ism for the pursuit of the highest Christian ideals! 
The estimate of Christian results in terms of statistics 
is but one phase of the danger. "Who doubts that it is 
impossible completely to square the New Testament 
ideals with any set of business maxims as yet devised? 
One of the chief glories of Christianity is the tran- 
scendence of its ideals : but we can more easily scale down 
the ideal to meet a secular mood than tone up the worldly 
mood to the Christian requirement. 

What, then, shall the Church do? One enthusiast is 
ready with an answer. He would have the Church cut 
loose from all material possessions whatsoever. He 
would send evangelists and prophets out upon the high- 
ways without plan for support. He would obey literally 
the New Testament injunction to take no thought for 
the morrow, and to provide neither scrip nor raiment 
for the journey. If the prophets relied upon God they 



PRELIMINARY 9 

would be fed. If they were not fed and so died they 
would fall as witnesses to a splendid ideal. 

The sheer vigor of such eloquence will always com- 
mend itself to some minds, but after all Christianity is 
in the world to save the world. There is something con- 
vincing about martyrdom when the victim is thrown to 
the lions or burned at the stake. The martyrdom is not 
so impressive when the hero dies of under-nourishment 
or takes up a life-insurance agency. If the Christian 
revelation means anything as to method, it means that 
the world is to be saved by trained leaders. That the 
training of prophets in the olden time and of apostles 
in the later day was not always conventional and in- 
stitutional does not detract from the pertinence of this 
remark. In every age the effective prophets of God 
have been as much marked by intellectual energy as by 
spiritual consecration. The prophecies of Amos, earliest 
of the literary prophets, are classics forever for the 
cogency of their expression and the symmetry of their 
form, as well as for their moral and spiritual passion. 
But the problem of training a mind for intellectual ef- 
fectiveness in the midst of a highly complex civilization 
is somewhat different from that of the day of the herds- 
man of Tekoa. This one problem of equipping leaders 
involves all the costly educational apparatus of our 
modern times. 

Moreover, the function of the Church is not exhausted 
in the vocal articulation of truth. As divine a revela- 
tion as any in our day is that of the worth of the scien- 
tific method. Fully as important as the actual discov- 
eries made by scientists has been the elaboration of the 
scientific method itself by which we mean the patient 
study of given facts themselves, in the search for laws 



10 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

which give us mastery over other facts. It is the duty 
of the Church to capture the scientific method as an in- 
strument for the advancement of the Kingdom. Es- 
pecially is this a duty in the search for laws which mean 
well or ill for social groups. In a day which looked 
upon sin just as personal guilt to be rebuked, the prophet 
needed not so elaborate a furnishing as in one which 
recognizes that some evils spring out of the constitution 
of society as such. From now on and always a major 
part of the work of the Church will devolve upon the 
prepared expert. The training of experts, however, im- 
plies a relation to and dependence upon the tangled so- 
cial institutions in the midst of which we live. 

What, after all, is the function of the Church? We 
are told that the function is to generate the moral and 
spiritual dynamic out of which all progress comes. 
Suppose, however, there are in the industrial and social 
conditions of a time obstacles to the generation of power. 
The entire social atmosphere may be so chilled as to 
make it impossible to start the fires of enthusiasm. Or 
the path of progress may be strewn with innumerable 
stumbling blocks. Clearly, then, it is the business of 
the Church to take upon itself the creation of a new 
social climate, or the removal of the social obstacles in 
the name of the release of the higher spiritual energies. 
One reason for a Church's bestirring itself against the 
immeasurable poverty, for example, which drags down 
the world is just the Christian impulse to relieve suffer- 
ing. But a further reason is the desire of any genuine 
Christian leadership to make an environment in which 
human beings can exist with measurably normal human- 
ity. The high-tide spiritual energies of the race never 
will be released until poverty is conquered, or until there 



PRELIMINARY 11 

is such "universal mastery over nature as to make it evi- 
dent that if a man lacks the material conditions for 
normal human life, the lack is his own fault and not the 
fault of society itself. 

The first reason for the organized Church's not seek- 
ing to cut its connection with the world of money and 
property is because it cannot, if it is to keep a foothold 
on the earth at all, and the second reason is that example 
is better than precept in the crusade to Christianize the 
industrial order. It is possible for the Church to do 
something worth while, in the trusteeship of its own 
material resources, to erect an essentially Christian doc- 
trine of the use of wealth. There is to-day abundant 
cataloguing of the faults of the Church. Sometimes the 
more radical, especially the younger prophets, seem to 
feel that the wisest course is one of unrelenting criticism 
of the Church at every point where it touches industry. 
After all, however, in the face of the certainty of bitter- 
est censure, sound church leadership will struggle on to 
work out into everyday material deed the industrial and 
social ideals for which Christianity stands. Any 
Church that thoroughly understands the problem here 
will indeed shrink from the difficulties of such a task. 
It might be easier for the Church to send its ministers 
and teachers out upon the highways to cry against the 
evils of the world without financial support from the 
Church itself, than for it in its official activities to find 
how righteously to exist in an industrial world, and how 
to sanctify all the properties coming into its hands by in- 
telligent use for the Kingdom of God. We must not for- 
get the word of Jesus as to the difficulty of a rich man 's 
entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. His word is as 
true for an institution as for an individual. We must 



12 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

not forget also that he declared that with the help of 
God even such a spiritual miracle is possible. 

A few words of caution are in order. Let it be under- 
stood that we have no dogmatic scheme by which to 
guide ourselves in our reflections. The Christian system 
must strive for the fullest and highest life for human 
beings. It must recognize that the object of all its en- 
deavor is flesh-and-blood men, women and children living 
in this present world. It must recognize also that these 
human beings do not come to their amplest selves apart 
from the multifarious group activities which consume 
so much of their energies. It must realize further that 
the soundest endeavor is not merely to make these lives 
bigger in quantitative terms but to refine them to a 
higher and nobler quality. To do this there must be 
passion for those human ideals and values which possess 
worth for all time. 

Having recognized all this, however, we must, we re- 
peat, obstinately resolve that we will not yield to the 
tyranny of any dogmatic absolutes. We are indeed un- 
der the law of absolute good- will one toward another, but 
that good- will cannot unerringly tell us what to do at a 
given time or place. In all our attempts to find our 
path in Christian well-doing there is this element of 
relativity. There is no one absolute social system which 
we can to-day accept as final. If we should all become 
socialists, even Christian socialists, overnight, and should 
start out to-morrow completely cut from our capitalistic 
past in an environment wholly favorable to socialism, 
we should find day after to-morrow that the advocates of 
a still newer order would be shouting in our ears ; and 
with that further order established the heralds of a yet 
brighter dawn would reproach us that we had made so 



PRELIMINARY 13 

feeble a beginning. Disconcerting to our dogmatic 
minds as it is, we must admit that in industry, as in 
every other realm of human conduct, some systems are 
right at one time, that they have their day, and that 
then the moral duty becomes that of helping them cease 
to be. Some moral courses are best in some places and 
worst in some others. It is conceivable that a half 
dozen economic systems of widely varying degrees of 
development should be flourishing in as many different 
nations in one and the same year, and each best adapted 
to its own national environment. 

This inevitable relativity in moral duties can, on the 
one hand, be appropriated as an excuse for moral laxity ; 
or it can, on the other hand, be construed as a summons 
to the most intense consecration. The compelling moral 
problem for a man or for an institution is to keep moral- 
ity up-to-date, — or in other words to make every advanc- 
ing insight the occasion for revision of and progress in 
moral practice. From this angle of view the duty of 
the Church in managing the material resources which 
are bound to stream into ecclesiastical coffers in increas- 
ing flood is to take position at the head of those march- 
ing toward a better industrial day and to stay there. 
This means, of course, that such threadbare adages as 
''business is business" and ''business and religion can- 
not mix" must be cast out once and for all. The most 
damaging criticism passed upon the Church to-day is 
that its ideals as to wealth and its contacts with riches 
and with rich men do not square with one another. In 
a degree this must always be true, — if an ideal is an 
ideal worth following it must forever move on ahead. 
But there is dreadful force in the criticism, especially 
pertinent when ecclesiastical leaders proceed on the as- 



14 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

sumption that in business the Church must act just as 
does any other business concern. There must be some 
middle course between abandoning material possessions 
altogether and yielding to the ordinary and conventional 
business maxims. To abandon material possessions alto- 
gether is physically impossible. To bow to a merely 
conventional business ethic ought to be morally impos- 
sible. 

Here again some objector may break out that when the 
Church gets into these business entanglements it is 
neglecting its true functions, — that the Church is in the 
world to save souls ; that is its only business. We must 
bespeak patience as we reply that as a matter of fact 
the Church is on this material earth, that the Church 
owns lands and houses, that the Church invests funds, 
that the Church employs labor, that in carrying forward 
any enterprise the Church expends money. This is true 
now, has always been true, and will be true as long as 
the world stands. In view of this actual situation we 
are raising the question as to how the Church should 
comport itself so as not to hinder the work of soul sav- 
ing, — but rather to facilitate that salvation. 

One further note of caution. Throughout this entire 
essay we are to speak of the Church in its organized 
form. "We are discussing the Church not as a sum of 
individuals but as an articulated body working under 
group laws. We are occupying ourselves with what the 
Church does as a Church. We are not presuming to 
enter the closet of individual ethics and to pass judg- 
ment upon the financial transactions of individuals. 
We shall try not to forget what we said a moment ago 
about the relativity of obligations. In view of that 
relativity it may be permissible for an individual in 



PRELIMINARY 15 

peculiar circumstances to sanction, at least provision- 
ally, conduct which would not be permissible for the 
official vote of the Church to which that individual be- 
longs. We say this in the same breath with which we 
avow the true aim of the Church to lift the conduct of 
all individual members up to the ideal set as a standard 
by the Church in its official policies. For the purposes 
of this study, however, the most severe exactions are 
for the Church, which is never to cease to think of itself 
as the organized body of Christ. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHURCH AS OWNER 

The seriousness of our problem, and possibly some 
hints as to its solution, may appear from viewing one 
after another different aspects of the contact of the 
Church with property. At the outset it may be best to 
consider the Church as an owner. Much of the wealth 
which comes into the ecclesiastical treasury will nat- 
urally remain in the possession of the Church; and 
ownership at once provokes criticism from many quar- 
ters. 

We meet, to begin with, the objection that important 
sums should not be allowed to remain in the permanent 
keeping of corporate bodies like the Church. The 
Church is a corporation, and corporations have no souls. 
Harm results from the control of huge funds by entities 
which are personal only by legal fiction. Ownership 
should be strictly personal. We have heard of recent 
years that the only inherent right to property vests in the 
individual human being. Property which an individual 
has legally acquired is his own by natural and inalienable 
justice. It is an unwarrantable extension of this right to 
make it include holdings by Church corporations. 

This leads us to ask what constitutes the right to 
ownership. One type of mind will of course have it 
that there is something self-evidently divine about the 
right to private property. We have been informed that 
one of the Ten Commandments tells us not to steal, and 

16 



THE CHURCH AS OWNER 17 

that the context lends indirectly a divine sanction to in- 
dividual property holding. There may indeed be some- 
thing divine about the personal right to hold property, 
but the divinity must publish itself in social benefits. 
The examination of primitive societies does not suggest 
that the sacredness of private property is an unmistak- 
able moral intuition peculiar to human consciousness 
from the beginning. Society seems to have recognized 
and then agreed, and then enacted, that the material 
goods which one has acquired in sanctioned ways shall 
be one's own till one chooses to dispose of them. Cen- 
turies of experience are said to have taught that the 
human life does not come to its best without some such 
control over physical goods as that which we see in 
private property. Individual initiative is smothered out 
if a man cannot retain power over the things which he 
trades for or produces. Simply because of the social 
usefulness of private property we have had property 
rights enacted into our fundamental laws. Much abuse 
by individual holders is overlooked because of the good 
of the system as a whole. The legal title is a contriv- 
ance intended to protect owners in their rights. But 
full ethical ownership of material goods implies high 
mastery of those goods. The bow of Ulysses belonged 
to Ulysses because he only could bend that bow. The 
legal title might have rested somewhere else but in just 
social morality Ulysses was the owner. It is in the hope, 
often illusory to be sure, that material things will in the 
main get into the hands of those who can best use them 
that Society maintains the rights of private property, 
rights which would be worthless without social support. 
The privateness of private property is a creation of the 
public will. 



18 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

Conceding all the saeredness of individual rights im- 
aginable, however, we see all through history the tend- 
ency of Society itself to regulate, and upon occasion to 
disregard, such rights in the name of the social result. 
We can hardly imagine a social situation in which it 
would be otherwise. Where is there a community with- 
out taxes? Suppose for our convenience we adopt the 
familiar division of material things into two classes, con- 
sumers' goods and, producers' goods, though the division 
may not always be clear. Consumers' goods are, 
roughly speaking, food and clothes and houses in 
which the consumers live. Producers' goods are the 
tools with which they work, — ranging all the distance 
from a hammer or a plow to a railroad or a steel mill. 
Now we could hardly find any extreme of individualism 
on the one hand or of collectivism or communism in the 
brain of the wildest dreamer on the other — even among 
those theories that say most about every man's natural 
right to appropriate from a social fund whatever goods 
he needs — that would fight hard for the right of a con- 
sumer to food or clothes or a house if he did not render 
some service to Society in return. A few talkers about 
collectivism seem to fancy that under a communistic 
free-for-all the loafer would have a fine time. Willing 
servants would bring him food to eat and coats to wear 
and beds in which to sleep. It would be difficult to find 
any formulation of communism even of the most ex- 
treme type which would warrant any such hopes. The 
communist would, indeed, maintain that under his sys- 
tem all men would gladly serve, but if they would not 
serve he would not make much more provision for them 
than our present competition makes for chronic and in- 
curable laziness. The general assumption is that a man 



THE CHURCH AS OWNER 19 

must work if he is to eat. So that on the side of con- 
sumers' goods the right to property comes, even among 
the radicals, to be the right to be furnished with material 
that will enable one to keep alive enough to work. 

On the side of producers' goods there is not a scheme 
even of communistic thinking worth looking at which 
would knowingly put industrial tools into the hands of 
manifest and confirmed bunglers. And the present de- 
vice of private property, as we have said, is built on the 
expectation that most men will get hold of the tools which 
they can best use. But the aim is always at the good of 
the community as a whole. Private property, we re- 
peat, is not born of the self-evident moral maxims ; it is a 
system born out of social exigencies for the good of So- 
ciety. To be sure, it has been allowed to run unhind- 
ered to questionable development, so that a single indi- 
vidual to-day may own a railroad stretching across a 
continent. The defenders of this extreme development 
always speak first of inherent sacredness when there is 
any revolutionary murmur against private ownership. 
But when they quiet down to the defensible argument 
they must justify their system, if they can, on the basis 
of the social benefit. 

It becomes evident then that the legitimacy of owner- 
ship at bottom turns round the social consequences of 
ownership. We have now to face the query as to 
whether a church can make as good use of material 
properties as can an individual. Theoretically at least 
the question answers itself. There is no reason why a 
group of men professing the ideals of Christ and work- 
ing in the spirit of Christ should not produce as whole- 
some a social result with material goods as do private 
owners working with the ordinary purposes of business. 



20 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

If it be objected that corporate ownership is impersonal 
we confront no weightier obstacle than if we say that 
the ownership of private wealth is personal. If by im- 
personal we mean cold-bloodedness and heartlessness we 
have indeed a deplorable outcome. But if we mean im- 
partiality and regard for the good of the whole we have 
an altogether different result, — one which may involve 
much for the welfare of Society. If by personal we 
mean anxious concern rightly to discharge personal ob- 
ligation we have one result. But we might just as well 
argue that the personal element in mastery of wealth 
leads to whim and caprice and partiality as to argue 
that impersonal method in corporate business leads to 
inhumanity. 

The upshot of it all is that in the use of the funds 
which are to come into its possession the Church is to be 
judged by the same principles by which all holders of 
wealth in a rational society should be rewarded or con- 
demned. What is to be the outcome stated humanly and 
socially? This one standard will sooner or later be 
practically universal in Christendom. Inasmuch as the 
purpose of the Church is professedly to bring men to the 
stature of manhood in Christ there cannot be the slight- 
est objection to putting the test as severely to the 
Church as to any other possessors of property rights. 

A second objection against the lodging of wealth in 
the strong boxes of the organized church is voiced by the 
man who feels that thereby the sovereignty of the State 
is somehow threatened. There is some force in the ob- 
jection, though not always of the sort that the objector 
may have in mind. If the State is the tool and organ of 
economic interests working for their own purposes the 
appearance of a great Church with immense monies of 



THE CHURCH AS OWNER 21 

its own does bring into the field a dangerous rival, — 
assuming that the Church itself is not likewise a mere 
tool of the backlying economic powers. This to one side 
however, — a glance at the course of history reveals that 
the Church has indeed been a dangerous competitor of 
the State when the Church has had too powerful control 
of earthly goods. It would be possible to make quite a 
showing for the thesis that the Protestant Reformation 
was an attempt by the State to tear loose from a Church 
control which rooted in mastery of economic resources. 
If we look to-day through some countries in which a move- 
ment like the Reformation has never worked itself out, 
we see that substantially a similar motive is at work, — 
namely to free the State from an institution whose 
power is feared because of its control of the well-filled 
purse. It is not the fashion nowadays to turn to Mexico 
for many political lessons. But the career of our south- 
ern neighbor for many years illustrates the resentment 
of States at all self-conscious against too great financial 
resources in ecclesiastical coffers. The moment, though, 
that the Church has been taught its fitting place by an 
anti- Church social movement and devotes itself to 
spiritual exercises, that moment the State opposition is 
likely to cease. What States object to is not the pos- 
session of wealth by the Church but the use of money, 
or of the influence or prestige which the money brings, 
to influence the current of political events. It is often 
said that the Roman Catholic Church to-day is as much 
of a property holder as the Standard Oil Company. 
Two obstacles prevent our knowing whether this is just 
or not: first we do not know how much the Roman 
Catholic Church owns, and second, we do not know how 
much the Standard Oil Company owns. Whatever the 



22 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

holdings of the Roman Catholic Church however, the 
plain citizen of the ordinary State on whose vote every- 
thing finally depends is not overmuch concerned so long 
as the weight of the immense financial resource is not 
thrown into the political scale. 

Has a Church, then, no right to express itself on a 
political issue? The Church certainly has such a right 
so long as it confines itself to open and aboveboard pro- 
cedure in the light of noonday. There can be slight 
moral justification, however, for any reliance upon ma- 
terial possessions to influence a political result. Of 
course it would be unthinkable that a Church would out 
of its treasury make appropriations in an ordinary po- 
litical campaign. In a campaign having to do with ex- 
traordinary moral issues the Church might feel the neces- 
sity of making its physical resources count on one side 
or the other. Even in such case citizens of the State 
have cause to complain if a single penny is spent in a 
way that the public does not understand. There is no 
institution on earth more under obligation to throw its 
financial books open to the world than is the Church. 
The Church method at every crisis at all political should 
be one of persuasion in the name of the supreme Chris- 
tian ideals. If any financial influence beyond this is to 
count a feather's weight, the world is entitled to all the 
facts. 

The danger in these days is not so much that the re- 
sources which are sure to come to the Church will count 
against the State as that they will count too much in 
favor of the State. We would not deny the right of the 
Church in a grave national crisis to cast all its legitimate 
influence to the cause which it deems to be just. It was 
through the agencies of organized Christianity that im- 



THE CHURCH AS OWNER 23 

mense volumes of material support came to the Allies 
against the Central Powers. I was ardently desirous of 
seeing the will of the Allies made to prevail, so that 
there is no lurking taint of pro-germanism in my expres- 
sion of the hope that such official Church operations will 
never again have to be so definitely subordinated to a 
state policy. The Church is to stand for transcendent 
ideals. It must so conduct itself as to be always free to 
proclaim those ideals no matter what the policy of the 
State may be. For the next twenty-five or fifty years 
the peril to Society may be not that Church and State 
are hostile to each other, but that they are too friendly. 
We mean by this that the only earthly power that will 
save civilization from recurrence of a horrible catastrophe 
like that of the past half-dozen years will be one that 
bears aloft the torch of the social and international ideals 
of Christianity: and that if the Church is to do this it 
must be so free from the State as not to be tempted to 
bedim its ideals by compromise. 

A third objector against the growing financial power 
of the Church has much to say about the physical goods 
of this earth belonging to all men in common. He can- 
not see why a Church is allowed to enclose lands which 
should be open to everybody and to crowd those lands 
with buildings which are opened only once or twice a 
week. If this were all of the objection we could meet it 
by pointing out that many churches to-day are open all 
the time and that we are proclaiming that wherever pos- 
sible the Church should serve twenty-four hours out of 
every twenty-four. There is, however, back of the ob- 
jection a vague and hazy notion of what is good for So- 
ciety. In discussing the foundations of private prop- 
erty we said that Society had established these rights 



24 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

for the worth, of the social outcome. We must urge 
that Society is not just a big number of persons, any one 
of whom has a right to feel aggrieved when he sees ag- 
gregations of property devoted to purposes of which 
he does not personally approve. Society is, indeed, the 
sum of all the individuals that compose it. But these 
individuals live in organic relations to groups to which 
they belong. Among these groups is the Church. Not 
only does a man become a new creature when he enters 
the Kingdom of God but he becomes a new creature when 
he joins the Church. That is to say, he enters into a 
net-work of relationships to his fellowmen which draw 
out of him powers to which he never could have attained 
as an unrelated individual. 

This grouping instinct is one of the outstanding facts 
in human history. In the form of the Middle Age Guilds 
it was the most significant factor during hundreds of 
years of European life. Socially worthy organizations 
have claims as sacred as those of individual persons, and 
these claims have the same foundation as other social 
rights, — namely they are granted because of the benefi- 
cial social consequences. Every now and again some 
radical whose knowledge of social processes is not as ex- 
tensive as his zeal shouts out for the confiscation of the 
property of age-old institutions. He does not under- 
stand that these properties are not just so many heaps 
of material stuffs which could be divided equally among 
the confiscators. To tear away the material possessions 
of many an organization serving a good social end would 
be not to distribute coins among the multitude, but to 
destroy living organisms which minister to Society it- 
self. 

To appropriate an illustration from a secular field we 



THE CHURCH AS OWNER 25 

may remind ourselves that there is in the United States 
a fund granted out of the estate of a multi-millionaire 
for the most thoroughly scientific investigation of the 
causes of diseases. It would be possible for a social 
enthusiast to excite himself desperately over the pro- 
cesses by which in other days the money which now pays 
for the scientific inquiries, was heaped up. He might 
even persuade a body of followers that the only fair 
course would be to confiscate the fund and distribute it 
among the people. Assuming that he succeeded in do- 
ing this, however, Society would soon be compelled to 
vote grants continuing scientific investigation precisely 
similar to that now being subsidized by the fund, and 
to make the grants in such fashion as to keep alive the 
most vital feature of the scientific organization, the 
esprit du corps of the investigators. Much social 
criticism fails to see that even sums of money become 
integral parts of the social organisms which are living 
entities. Here again the test is as to the social con- 
sequences. "We can only appeal to the ideal of the 
Church and say that the Church can manifestly work 
with a more wholesome social result if it can have the 
benefit of whatever will increase its group consciousness 
and group effectiveness. What the Church will with- 
draw from the pockets of Society will not likely be too 
much if the money truly adds to the efficacy of an or- 
ganization preaching the ideals of Jesus. All comes 
back, however, to the worth of the human product, to 
which we must hold steadily. The quasi-personality of 
the group is sacred only as it serves a sacred purpose. 
Business corporations organized for utterly selfish pur- 
poses are forms of group activity. Political parties are 
social organisms. If Society cannot redeem financial, or 



26 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

political or any other group activities set on selfish or 
unsocial aims it has a right to reduce them to impotence. 
And this opens the door to a final objection, which is 
that the grant of property to Church organizations en- 
courages the growth of the delusion of a super-organiza- 
tion above and beyond the people composing the or- 
ganization. We are reminded that this was that inner 
vice of Prussianism which plunged the whole world into 
war. The sin of Prussianism, however, was not so much 
in the erection of a super-State before the mind of Ger- 
many, as in the character of that super-State. The ideal 
beneath which the individual was to be as naught was 
that of brute might hacking its way through to universal 
victory. The Church has an ideal which indeed reaches 
out beyond the members actually composing the Church 
at any one instant. The ideal is of a communion of the 
saints which includes not merely those striving after 
righteousness here and now, but also those who have 
struggled and passed on, and those who are to come here- 
after. It stands for a picture of human life yet to be 
realized, — a social body of Christ, a righteous humanity 
whose members are as closely correlated as the organs of 
the human body. The dream may never be materialized 
on earth. From this point of view the Church does 
stand for a super-body or for a super-thing beyond any- 
thing here and now. Is it not worth while to have an 
organism witnessing to the belief in such a hope? Can 
there be anything more beneficial for Society as a whole 
than to have such a conception floating, not as a cloud 
castle before the far-seeing gaze of poets and seers, but 
as a working plan to guide the efforts of men and women 
and children in the daily task ? Is there any more noble 



THE CHURCH AS OWNER 27 

goal than this toward which the golden streams of earth 's 
physical resources could be turned? 

And yet we must not miss the force of the objection. 
If the Church is to receive increasing control over the 
things of earth it must arrive at that habit of mind which 
surely discriminates between the temporal and the 
eternal, and between the instrumental and the end-in- 
itself. Money is an instrument. It would be easily pos- 
sible, however, for the accumulation of material goods to 
become an ecclesiastical end-in-itself. We have beheld 
altogether too much of such a tendency in the history of 
the Church. The ends-in-themselves in the Church are 
the lives that compose the Church, as those lives move 
on toward the progressive incarnation of the Christian 
ideals. The instruments in the Church are creeds and 
rituals and organizational contrivances. They are tools, 
or organs, to aid in the development of life. But how 
often have we seen the relation reversed and the creedal 
formula, for example, placed in foremost importance? 
An organizational scheme is nothing but a device for 
human and spiritual uplift, but how often have we seen 
organizations, as such, exalted for almost worshipful 
honor. So it might be possible for a Church, especially 
in a commercial epoch, to make the possession of material 
goods of more importance than the welfare of human 
beings. This possibility must always prevent us from 
turning hastily away from those who protest against 
property-holding by the Church because of the likeli- 
hood of property to be erected into an end-in-itself. 

We repeat that ethical title to ownership implies an 
ability to make the most of the material owned. In later 
chapters we shall examine some of the standards by 



28 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

which, the Church must judge its expenditures. We may 
anticipate by saying that the obligation upon the Church 
is simply to use money as a key to unlock the higher 
treasures. We say of money as a mechanism of ex- 
change that its value consists not in anything in itself 
but in its power to travel from hand to hand and from 
pocket to pocket, figuratively transmuting itself into the 
foods on which men can subsist, or delivering the tools 
with which they can labor. It is the business of the 
Church so to utilize all its material possessions as to 
unlock for men the doors to the finer riches. 

What those riches are the Church will itself have to 
be, in the first instance, the judge. The outside indi- 
viduals and groups and Society itself cannot prescribe 
for the Church beforehand what to seek for with its 
resources. The State and Society can indeed lay down 
laws and establish customs within which the Church 
must move, but the Church itself, as a body of persons 
looking toward the highest spiritual ideals, will be ex- 
pected to announce the content of those ideals and the 
method by which they are to be reached. If the 
Church, however, has this initiative, this first word — 
the general public opinion of Society will have the last 
word. The results of Church activities will in the end 
have to be such as commend themselves to the public 
mind and conscience. And this ought not to be an im- 
possible achievement. Enlarging and improving life 
has a power of rendering itself intelligible to the dullest 
understanding. Deeds of kindness and helpfulness 
need no interpreter. There may be unfathomable depths 
in religious truth, and the ideal in Christ may forever 
march beyond our arm's length, but what truth we get 
bears witness to itself, and what measure of the ideal we 



THE CHURCH AS OWNER 29 

attain has spontaneous attractiveness. By its fruits the 
Church is to be known. The people who have to eat the 
fruit will be the best judges as to its quality. It will 
not do for the Church to declare that the Christian 
ideal is in its keeping and that it cares not whether men 
outside give heed, since it is the authority in its own 
sphere. The loftiest ideal must at last cast the farthest 
reaching shadow on the ground ; and by the social healing 
in that shadow will the justice of the claim of the Church 
to an increasing share of this world's goods be judged. 
There is no divine right to property apart from a divine 
resolve in using property to make men more open to the 
divine. We move here in a realm altogether apart from 
the narrow legal and conventionally commercial. The re- 
sources of the Church belong to the Lord in that they 
are to be wholly devoted to the cause of the divine 
Kingdom. If they are not so devoted they lack social 
justification — and apart from social worth they cannot 
be soundly defended by abstract legality or appeals to 
divine sanction. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 

The problem of the Church as solicitor at first glance 
seems to be no problem at all. All the Church has to 
do is to put before its members the recital of the needs 
and then to reenforce this with the spiritual appeal. 
The Church professedly exists for the realization of the 
finer possibilities of mankind. The showing of the 
money requirements necessary ought to be the only re- 
quisite for inciting Christians to adequate response. 
Readers of the New Testament recall that Paul fre- 
quently asked for financial aid for Christian causes, — 
that he simply mentioned the needs and based the claim 
on the accepted thought of the spirit of Christianity. 
"Remember the poor saints at Jerusalem, " he would 
say, "And then remember also Christ Jesus who though 
he was rich yet for your sakes became poor, that ye 
through his poverty might become rich. , ' There could 
not be a more dignified call for money or one more de- 
serving of substantial return. 

Unfortunately, in this tough-grained and twisted 
world, it is not always possible to attain the Pauline 
standard. One of the armor joints at which the Church 
is most often assailed is its dependence upon financial 
contributions, and the real though often unconscious 
dependence also upon those who make the contributions. 
Even if all the constituency of a Church were at the top- 
most peak of consecration many of the consecrated would 

30 



THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 31 

have their own notions as to how Church money should 
be spent, and these notions might not be of the sanest. 
Actually the money of the Church comes from a con- 
stituency not wholly sanctified and some of the con- 
tributors are outside the Church. It is possible, then, to 
press the charge that the exigencies of the Church make 
it necessary for it to adopt an attitude of virtual com- 
promise toward rich givers. It would be almost impos- 
sible to-day to listen to a speech of any length directed 
against the Church without hearing this criticism that 
the Church sells its birthright by its acceptance of the 
gifts of the rich. Because of this dependence upon 
money contributions the Church is often condemned for 
having the class consciousness of the well-to-do. 

Twenty-five years ago quite a notable debate raged 
over the propriety of a Church organization's accepting 
' ' tainted money. ' ' When the revelations as to the prac- 
tices of some of the great corporations first came to light 
the spontaneous feeling of any strictly ethical conscious- 
ness was that money gained by such processes was 
tainted, to say the least. We must not disparage those 
who took this stand. Men like Washington Gladden 
rendered a public service in calling attention to the 
impropriety in a Church's accepting, without a word, a 
share in ill-gotten gains. Much criticism was heaped 
upon Gladden and his followers, some churchmen avow- 
ing that the scruple was absurd and even silly. We 
were gravely informed that money in itself cannot be 
tainted, that any money to which a man has a legal right 
ought to be freely accepted by a Church, that to say 
otherwise is pharisaism; all of which now seems quite 
beside the mark. The Gladden group were speaking out 
of an awakening social consciousness. They were pion- 
eers in a new field, trying to guard the Church and So- 



32 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

ciety from the evil effects of alliance with anti-social 
forces. They are entitled to unstinted credit for their 
note of warning, though the problem would not be put 
to-day just as they stated it twenty-five years ago. If 
the money was indeed tainted the best way to remove its 
taint was to devote it to a good cause — return to those 
wronged being out of the question — though such a course 
would not remove the taint of the giver of the money, 
especially if he kept on supplying taint. 

The pertinent consideration, however, — in spite of the 
dictum that guilt is always personal — is that the faults 
of a corporation are likely to be faults of men not as 
individuals but as groups. The charge should lie against 
bad group ethics, — this regardless of whether the group 
is big or little. Too many corporations practice only on 
a world scale what too many smaller firms are doing on 
a village scale. The best way to attack such a problem 
is not by refusing gifts from one supposedly outstanding 
personal offender in a spirit of inquisition into individual 
consciences, but by effort to improve group morality. 
This is most desperately imperative. Many a person- 
ally upright business man is helpless in the clutch of a 
machine which he alone cannot improve. When we 
speak of the Church as itself an investor we shall in- 
dicate some ways in which it is possible for Christian 
conscience to favor concerns which are acting according 
to the best social light available, — possible too without 
laying the Church open to the charge of inquisitional 
fussiness. When the Church seeks the worthiest cor- 
porations with which to invest its money it is free from 
the charge of not attending to its own business, since 
the Church's investment of its own money is strictly its 
own business. 



THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 33 

The moment we begin to talk about the evils of sys- 
tems we are halted by those who will have it that the 
Church is wrong in accepting any money from rich men 
at all. All the rich are lumped together in one category 
as parts of a system which is altogether evil. But this, 
we repeat, is hasty, to say the least. Many are doing the 
best they can in an order which they would be glad to 
make better. And under any system some men will have 
more than others ; and ' ' riches" is a relative term. After 
Society has rooted out all the artificial inequalities there 
are some inherent and natural differences which cannot be 
escaped. Among them the inequality that comes from the 
ability of some men under any conditions to get more 
money than others by the superior worth of the service 
they render, and by their ability to hold fast to what 
they have earned. Suppose we strip from individuals 
all riches that descend by inheritance, or all that pile up 
from anything like an unearned increment. Suppose 
we decree that no man shall have a cent of economic rent, 
or of interest, or of profits for which he has not labored. 
Unless we go on then to laws which would at least at 
present stamp out all initiative whatsoever, we would 
find that at the end of ten years, or even at the end of 
five, some men in the community would have in their 
possession manifold more than other men, and every 
cent of their resources might have come out of a service 
rendered the community. It may be that the possession 
of immense wealth under the present industrial order 
argues that the owners have received a reward beyond 
anything they could legitimately have earned. But 
even under the present scheme we cannot pour unspar- 
ing condemnation on the man who has fairly played the 
game according to the rules which now obtain. Some 



34 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

day we may change the rules, or we may even do away 
with, the game altogether. But as long as the game is 
played according to the rules established by Society's 
sanction, undiscriminating condemnation of the rich be- 
cause they are rich is unreasonable and unwarranted. 

Passing now from the notion of tainted money and of 
wickedness inherent in wealth as such, what are the 
perils which confront the Church as a Solicitor of funds 
in a day when the funds are sought in such huge 
amounts? It will be understood that we are writing 
this essay after some opportunity for observation of 
facts. We may say then that the danger is not pri- 
marily that rich men will seek to control the Church. 
If we take any list of prominent preachers in any gen- 
eration we find that probably all of them have at various 
times served congregations composed at least in part of 
wealthy pew-holders. Probably all the bolder speaking 
prophets in the pulpit through any stretch of years 
would testify that the number of attempts at direct con- 
trol of their speech had been small. To more of an ex- 
tent than we may imagine even the wealthy pew-holders 
expect a measure of boldness in pulpit utterance. While 
we have not data at hand to verify our conclusion we 
are of the opinion that there is less attempt at direct 
control of the preacher's utterance by rich contributors 
than there is of control of newspaper, for example, by 
rich advertisers, or of the politicians' speeches by heavy 
givers to the campaign fund. We may legitimately im- 
agine that after some sermons the rich listener thinks 
very emphatically and that he may even speak out with 
considerable force, but he does not often directly pro- 
ceed to official action against the preacher. 

Just as the attempts at direct control of pulpit utter- 



THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 35 

ance have been comparatively few, so also the attempts 
to interfere with the utterance in the educational institu- 
tions of the churches have been few, or were few until 
the Great War for the time being tore us loose from all 
our accustomed fastenings. The outrages upon free 
speech perpetrated in the past few months must be 
diagnosed as wholly abnormal. We have confidence 
enough in the mass of the people to believe that these 
lapses into bigotry and intolerance and social lunacy will 
pass as the war fever cools down. 

What is, Jthen, the danger that confronts the Church 
in raising money? One danger is in the phrasings of 
appeal shaped to render them convincing to wealthy 
contributors. The test of the success of such appeals is 
the amount of money that flows into the coffers of the 
Church in response. It could hardly be expected that a 
call for funds for the Kingdom of Heaven which glows 
with much heat on the manifest inadequacies of the pres- 
ent industrial order would get a lavish welcome from 
the upholders of that order. We might indeed hear no 
violent invective against the appeal but the list of sub- 
scribers would not be long. Again, successful soliciting 
for funds depends upon a quality of mind and ability in 
the solicitor which does not tend toward the most rugged 
and uncompromising fearlessness of utterance. What- 
ever truth there is in the charge that the Church has 
the class consciousness of the man of wealth probably 
arises out of the fact that so many leaders of church 
enterprises at one time and another have to devote so 
large a share of their time to interviews with well-to-do 
potential contributors. Making every allowance for the 
personal integrity of such solicitors they must be rare 
souls indeed if they successfully withstand the tempta- 



36 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

tions which come from long continued personal associa- 
tion with the possessing classes. 

There are pleasant incidents connected with enter- 
tainment by a rich man which at least get the nose under 
the tent for the camel of the rich man 's social philosophy. 
Wealth surrounds itself with some charms of taste and 
refinement which are often more appreciated by the 
solicitor of the contribution than by the contributor him- 
self. The solicitor must be a patient listener ; he will 
hear repeated expositions of the superiority of the pres- 
ent social order as over against any other social order 
that the world has ever known. Yery few rich defenders 
of the order moreover are quite so blunt as to say that 
they believe in the order just because of its material 
productiveness. They see in it rather the foundation of 
law and the buttress of family life and the bulwark of 
religion. If the upholder of the present industrial sys- 
tem takes an interest in theology at all he is likely to be 
altogether orthodox. He is impressed by a Christianity 
which lays stress on authority and feels most content 
when he hears that the authority roots in an infallible 
Book or an infallible Church. Unless the solicitor is 
extraordinarily self-controlled he emerges from a few 
years of successful solicitation of funds from rich men 
thoroughly imbued with the class consciousness of the 
well-to-do. It was this possibility which years ago led 
Robert Smillie, the greatest English labor leader of our 
day, to say that he would never "accept invitations" 
from the rich. A well known ecclesiastical educator in 
this country was for years most successful in securing 
financial aid for his university from the leaders of a 
mighty corporation almost constantly under fire of 
criticism. The defense of the corporation methods by 



THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 37 

the ecclesiastical leader was so whole-hearted as to lend 
color to the charge that he was advocating" practices 
which the leaders of the corporation themselves had 
abandoned years before because they were convinced, 
they said, that such methods were socially harmful! 
Even such solicitors, however, with such a class con- 
sciousness seldom break out in frontal assault against 
those who feel it to be the function of the Church to 
warn of current social perils. They confess to an im- 
patience with the impatience of their radical brethren. 
They regret that the critics do not have more tact, and 
advise that zeal be tempered with judgment. They also 
insist that utterances should be timely, — by which they 
usually mean the lapse of a safe period after there is 
reason for saying anything. Or they are like an ec- 
clesiastical editor to whom Borden P. Bowne, at the time 
the foremost thinker in American Methodism, once sub- 
mitted a manuscript for publication. The editor agreed 
that everything in the manuscript was true but he re- 
gretted that the writer had not stated the truth in such 
fashion as not to attract notice. 

It is in such directions that the peril of the Church as 
a solicitor of funds must be sought. The danger of at- 
tempt at direct control is slight. The masses of the 
Church would resent such control. The risk is that he 
who has dealing with rich contributors for much of his 
task, with rare exceptions will arrive at the point of 
view of the contributor. Any man who has been in the 
ministry for a quarter of a century can recall preachers 
who began their careers by being prophets of God and 
ended by being chaplains of the well-to-do, — chaplains, 
too, very deft in pulling the sting from the piercing 
phrases of the Gospel. One such solicitor once rebuked 



38 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

a subordinate official who was protesting against having 
to sit silent before a prospective giver's oracular pro- 
nouncements in defense of all details of the capitalistic 
system by saying: "It is your business to convert dol- 
lars as well as to convert men. ' ' The reply seems quite 
final until we begin to think it over. "We do not always 
begin to convert men by telling them what fine fellows 
they are. Souls are not often flattered and tickled into 
the Kingdom of Heaven. Conversion implies a convic- 
tion for sin and the desire to forsake sin and to lead a 
new life following the commandment of God. If the 
conversion of dollars were occasionally sought by arous- 
ing similar spiritual stirrings we might well rejoice in 
such conversions as gleams of the dawn of a new day. 
But not many dollars are converted by just such pro- 
cesses. 

Still there are solicitors who bring money to the King- 
dom of God in thoroughly ethical ways. Moreover, lest 
we seem to have left the rich men in a bad light, we may 
say also that in the United States increasing numbers of 
rich men can be found who will contribute money to 
causes led by men in whom they indeed have confidence 
but in whose methods or views they may not altogether 
believe. There are in our country educational institu- 
tions controlled by boards of trustees who will not think 
of interfering with the instruction of the institution so 
long as they believe in the ability and integrity of the 
instructors, and who will heartily reelect such teachers 
for terms of years. It is more and more the case that — 
wretched events of the last year or two apart — holders 
of financial power will support radical utterances in 
which they do not agree. A memorable instance oc- 
curred in 1916 in the relation of the late Willard 



THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 39 

Straight to the publication of The New Republic. It 
will be remembered that Mr. Straight was supporting 
this journal of liberal opinion with extensive pecuniary 
aid for what he conceived to be the general good of the 
community. In the presidential campaign of 1916 the 
editors of The New Republic decided to favor Mr. Wilson 
for the Presidency. Mr. Straight desired to see Mr. 
Hughes elected. Instead of forcing his own choice upon 
the editors of the journal, or of withdrawing his financial 
support, Mr. Straight was content to publish a letter 
expressing his own political views and then to leave the 
editors free to follow their course. This was tolerance 
worthy of the name, — tolerance of a view opposed to 
one's own view, and that not on an incidental trifle, but 
on an issue of genuine importance. Valuable as were 
Mr. Straight's many services to his country none was 
more valuable than this manifestation of a spirit which 
means everything to a nation which depends for its 
social progress on free discussion. 

We may count upon public sentiment to encourage 
an ever enlarging spirit of generosity on the part of the 
well-to-do. It requires only ordinary intelligence to 
recognize that the capitalistic system to-day is on trial 
as never before. Abstract arguments either for or 
against the system are of slight value. The effective de- 
fense will have to be the cultivation of social responsibil- 
ity by the well-to-do. It is now the common expectation 
in this country that when a holder of vast possessions 
dies he shall leave a considerable share of his holdings 
to some agency devoted to social betterment. There is 
general recognition that this is the most effective way to 
keep the holdings intact. As we said on a previous 
page, even if the extreme doctrines of some social radi- 



40 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

cals should be one day adopted and all endowment funds 
should be confiscated in the name of the public welfare, 
the community would find that if it was not to suffer 
irreparable harm it would be compelled to set aside out of 
the common treasury sums for the very purposes which 
had been served by most of the endowments. 

Only a short memory is necessary to recall the day 
when the holders of property were looked upon as en- 
titled to do what they pleased with their own. It is not 
twenty years since President Hadley of Yale was the 
target of much caustic ridicule from some newspapers 
of the country because of his declaration that the time 
was approaching when public sentiment against the* ir- 
responsible use of wealth would become so terrific as to 
bring about the social ostracism of the well-to-do who 
would not take their social trusteeship seriously. "Within 
a comparatively few years after President Hadley 's 
prophecy an insurance investigation in New York dug 
up much startling evidence as to the frivolous, not to 
say immoral, recklessness of some kings in the financial 
world. No penalties were enacted by a court after the 
investigations, but within a few months the wrongdoers 
had, most of them, been eliminated from all possibility 
of future wrongdoing with a deadliness which was simply 
tragic. The only executioner at work was public opin- 
ion. We are not saying that we rejoice in the temper of 
the public mind which puts compulsion upon those be 
queathing goods to grant portions of them to social 
enterprises, but we do say that the public expectation is 
what it is, and that gifts for social causes are more and 
more regarded as of the normal duty accompanying the 
possession of wealth. In this consciousness of duty 
many of the well-to-do freely and gladly devote 



THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 41 

large measures of their wealth to the common good. 

We have given much of this chapter to a phase of our 
subject which is after all of secondary importance. It 
would indeed be damaging to the Church if the time 
should ever come when it would be chiefly dependent 
upon the generosity of the well-to-do. But with pros- 
pects of denominational union as bright as they now 
are, and with present-day emphasis on every-member 
canvasses, the funds of the Church will not come in chief 
part from the offerings of the more favored. Indeed 
they have never thus come. The generosity of the or- 
dinary givers has made possible the enterprises of the 
Church. The new plans make for rosier expectation of 
material generosity, however. The totals will soon be so 
high that no single giver or group of givers can say that 
their individual contributions decisively influenced the 
outcome. One of the denominations of the United States 
recently finished a campaign for over one-hundred mil- 
lions of dollars. The records show that no individual 
gave more than seven hundred and fifty thousand, and 
that the one gift of three-quarters of a million was a far, 
far cry from the next largest gift. 

With the most of the church money coming from the 
pockets of what we call the plain people we have less to 
fear as to a repressive use of such money against free- 
dom of speech than if the money came chiefly from the 
rich. The ordinary man is not only the bulwark of the 
State but of the Church as well. He will sanction the 
expenditure of money for more progressive social pur- 
poses than will he in a more favored lot who has a 
greater stake in the continuance of a given set of in- 
dustrial circumstances. The Inter-Church Movement, 
for example, recently set aside a considerable sum for 



42 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

the investigation of the Steel Strike of 1919. Because 
of the manifest impossibility of getting reliable informa- 
tion from the newspapers, the leaders of the Movement 
felt that it was only proper that twenty-two millions of 
church people in the United States should at least have an 
opportunity of learning the facts concerning a grave in- 
dustrial crisis. Who would be more likely to approve 
such use of funds, the rich man, or the "plain man"? 
More than one rich man saw in the investigation itself 
something almost resembling sacrilege. But the plain 
man is not an easy victim of any such fears. He can be 
reached readily by arguments that point toward the 
common welfare. Moreover, he himself wants to know. 
With the contributions coming from the mass of the 
people the framing of appeals for funds will have to 
lay more and more stress on the social value of the ends 
to which the funds are to be put. The man who is 
skilled in dealing with favored individuals on their 
weaker sides will find it advantageous to develop other 
types of argument if he is to be shifted to the field of 
public appeals. It is true that under the new system 
we shall not have so many buildings honoring the names 
of individual donors, but we shall have schools and hos- 
pitals with every cent of their value devoted to the 
common welfare. The only danger in reliance upon 
masses of the religious constituency for financial support 
is the possibility of waste in expenditure. And yet this 
danger, in this present hour of pitiless publicity, be- 
comes less and less important. The test of any financial 
policy is its fruit. If the Church shows that its material 
outlays are producing the type of yield for which the 
Church stands, charges of extravagance will get scant 
heed. Besides we must remember that church money 



THE CHURCH AS SOLICITOR 43 

accounts probably get minuter scrutiny by greater num- 
bers of interested and conscientious persons than any 
other accounts. Any religious organization worth the 
name takes good care that the possibility of the misuse 
of funds for personal ends is reduced to a minimum, 
and with all the books open, chances for foolish and in- 
considerate handling of consecrated goods also becomes 
infrequent. The principal chance for error is through 
some fundamental mistake in policy. But if the policy 
must be one which millions of men pronounce essentially 
in harmony with Christian ideals the possibilities of 
substantial mistake here should not cause us undue 
anxiety. It is hard to frame effective appeal for gifts 
from hosts of Christians unless the appeal be sincerely 
Christian. "We may well rejoice that we seem to be at 
the beginning of a day when we must lay emphasis more 
and more upon the deepest human needs as we ask for 
financial support in great church campaigns. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 

The Church, has always been conceived of as a phil- 
anthropic agency distributing' bounty in outright gift 
with a more or less lavish hand. The line between the 
spending of the Church in free gifts or grants of aid and 
in direct purchase or payment in harmony with a defi- 
nite policy is indeed so fine as to be almost fanciful. 
But the division has its value nevertheless inasmuch as 
Church appropriations which are a bestowment of gifts, 
rather than expenditure in purchase of goods or services, 
raise unique ethical considerations, — two or three illus- 
trations of which it may be worth while to glance at. 

We may revert for the moment to a distinction which 
we have previously utilized between material conceived 
of as consumers' goods and conceived of as producers' 
goods. By producers' goods we mean broadly the tools 
with which men work. In the grant of consumers ' goods 
to those in need the Church will always have a responsi- 
bility. One of the last recorded acts of Jesus in his life 
with the Twelve was so to speak to Judas, who carried the 
bag, that the disciples concluded that Jesus was ordering 
a customary gift to the poor. There is so much suffering 
in the world that the Church is under the common ob- 
ligation of all human institutions to do everything pos- 
sible for the mitigation of that suffering. There is not 
now in the world food enough to go around, or at least 
not equitable enough distribution to allay the hunger all 

44 



THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 45 

over the world. In the presence of this gnawing pain 
one duty of the Church is to hurry forth to quick re- 
lief. 

And yet if the Church heeds the example of Jesus she 
will see that her function as a relieving agency is not 
altogether exhausted in the gift of direct aid. Some- 
thing can be done by the Church toward eliminating the 
inequalities of the present industrial system. If the 
Church would seriously set herself to a constructive plan 
for the betterment of the modern industrial order as 
such she could, along this single path, accomplish more 
for physical hunger than by outright scattering of mil- 
lions of loaves of bread. It is strange to note the up- 
roar which arises in many quarters when the Church 
thus proposes to improve the industrial machine. 
Same business leaders who freely admit that it is the 
duty of the Church to distribute alms will raise a hue 
and cry about the danger of losing sight of the pure 
Gospel when a prophet proposes a remedy which will 
help do away with the necessity of giving alms. Still 
the almsgiving of physical goods is a part of the task 
of the Church. The work is, of course, not so to be 
carried on as to pauperize those who receive the gifts. 
This danger, however, is in our day of scientific handling 
of charitable grants, practically negligible. 

We are more concerned with the formal appropriation 
made by denominations to instrumentalities aiming at 
religious results, — results as fundamental as the winning 
of converts and the carrying forward of religious educa- 
tion. The organizational features of the Churches and 
schools are so many instruments to be used in the ad- 
vance of the Kingdom. Grants to such institutions are 
not the bestowal of bread and meat upon the hungry, but 



46 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

the supplying of tools with which to work. In such 
philanthropies the question is as to who can use the tool 
best. "We have sometimes heard social organizations cry 
for help somewhat as if they were poor stricken travelers 
on a Jericho road. One celebrated solicitor for educa- 
tional funds delights to tell how he won the favorable 
response of a leading capitalist by painting his school 
as the wounded sufferer on the roadside and the capitalist 
as the Good Samaritan. This appeal is interesting 
chiefly as showing what a solicitor can do when he is put 
to it. The school was not in need of bread or of medi- 
cine, but was essentially asking for instruments. The 
Gospel Samaritan, on the other hand, was handing out 
immediate relief, and not placing tools in the hands of 
a wounded traveler. If such had been the nature of 
the neighborly obligation the Samaritan might well have 
passed several days at the inn to find out just what in- 
strument the pleading man could best use. The moment 
we regard the agencies of the Church as instruments for 
the accomplishment of a purpose the question becomes: 
who can best use the instruments ? Professor Palmer of 
Harvard has made an interesting remark concerning the 
distribution of scholarship funds which have been placed 
in his trusteeship. He declares that it is his observation 
after many decades of experience with college students 
that if any help is to be allowed it should be given to the 
students who are capable of doing the finest intellectual 
work, rather than to those who are financially neediest. 
This at first sounds rather heartless. But there is im- 
plied here the distinction which we are trying to draw. 
If the problem is just that of relieving hunger then Pro- 
fessor Palmer's course does indeed seem harsh. If, on 
the other hand, the problem is that of putting tools in 



THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 47 

the right hands the course is wise. Professor Palmer in- 
sists that his policy has been amply justified by the so- 
cial and scholastic results. 

The Church is in the world for the salvation of the 
souls of men and for the progressive building of those 
souls into righteousness. With this as the purpose of 
the Church is it wise for denominations to vote money 
outright to organizations in communities where there 
are already churches enough for evangelization and 
Christian training? "We have heard much of the elimi- 
nation of Church competition in recent years, but we 
have not yet heard too much. Let us trust that the new 
plans for federation and for union will so succeed as to 
do away with the positive evils of such competition. 
Before such elimination comes, however, we shall have 
to dwell on some other phases of the present-day situa- 
tion than just the waste of money involved in competi- 
tion. The fact is that there are wide tracts of territory 
in the United States to-day where members of this or that 
church do not look upon souls as safely saved until they 
are connected with just the denomination to which these 
worshipers themselves belong. As an official of the 
Methodist Church I have had ministers from rural dis- 
tricts protest against federation agreements because the 
evangelistic services of churches other than the Methodist 
do not succeed in getting seekers through to a clear ex- 
perience of salvation! To such minds all reference to 
financial considerations seems trifling. The task here is 
to bring the Methodist or the Presbyterian or the Baptist 
to a state of grace where each will concede the efficacy 
of the other's theory of the method of salvation- If we 
can bring the Church constituency to see that after all in 
organizational features the Church activities are instru- 



48 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

mental, we can do much to shift the point of view of 
many Christian workers. Aid in overchurched fields is 
now sought as if it were the necessities of spiritual life, 
while what is really bestowed is a tool which may be 
abused in unrighteous competition. To overstock a com- 
munity with churches is not less absurd than to overstock 
it with steel mills, or wheat elevators, or cotton factories, 
or blacksmith shops. To call such overstocking phil- 
anthropy is woefully inaccurate terminology. 

It is a delicate operation, — this of bringing the 
churches to discern the difference between the instru- 
mental features of the Church which may be competi- 
tively wasted and the Church as composed of persons 
who are ends-in-themselves craving the fundamental ne- 
cessities of spiritual existence. One of the recurring 
tendencies repeatedly manifest in the history of the 
Church is this of confusing means and ends. If the 
sacred funds raised for Christian purposes are not to be 
wasted in a reckless competition the Churches will have 
to come to a more intelligent emphasis on what salvation 
is, as over against the manifold methods of presenting 
the ways of salvation. We need that enlargement of 
view which helps us see that there may be many meth- 
ods of presenting religious truth effectively with no one 
method having conclusive advantage over any other. 

For illustration by analogy we may reflect that de- 
mocracy in political life can get its will expressed through 
widely varying forms of governmental procedure. Eng- 
land is more democratic than the United States in getting 
the popular will quickly into action, but England's form 
of government is to a measure monarchical. Or, to take 
a further illustration, the Anglo-Saxon method of de- 
termining the guilt or innocence of an accused person 



THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 49 

is trial by jury with the rules of evidence most carefully 
prescribed. The Anglo-Saxon mind is thrown into par- 
oxysms of mirth in watching the Latin mind in its pro- 
cedure in trying to find the truth about the accused. 
The Latin reciprocates with contempt toward the Anglo- 
Saxon. And yet probably as many guilty persons are 
brought to justice under either system as under the 
other. Similarly the man who has been reared a Presby- 
terian may have some difficulty in understanding the 
trustworthiness of the Baptist or Episcopalian pathway 
into the Kingdom. But Episcopalian or Baptist saint- 
liness when it is once attained is quite as satisfying as 
Presbyterian saintliness. For saintliness means a life 
lived in obedience to the will of God, and the gifts and 
graces which flourish from such obedience. The central 
governing boards of most churches see this clearly. 
Their duty is to cease making grants to competitive or- 
ganizations where a community is jammed with the tools 
of religion. If a scant handful of persons desire to 
have in a community of twenty other churches a church 
of their own stamp there is no objection provided they 
pay their own expenses. Any group of believers is en- 
titled to any luxury of this kind that they can them- 
selves pay for. If a man desires to carry two watches 
he can do so, — if he pays for them. But there is every 
objection in everyday ethics to the use of funds raised 
generally throughout the Church for the spread of the 
Kingdom of God, as grants to such groups. If the 
members of a struggling Church — with other Churches 
within a stone's throw — piteously wail out that the 
mother denomination is leaving them to starve the ad- 
equate reply is that the possibility of starvation is not 
up for debate. There is enough nourishment in the 



50 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

community to prevent any one's spiritual famishing. 
The sole question is whether an extra instrument shall 
be placed in the hands of persons who are showing that 
they have not the slightest understanding of its proper 
use. The problem is not that of allowing the Church 
to die, — it is rather that of keeping an instrument out 
of reach of the wrong hands. 

More important, however, than this negative duty of 
withholding is the positive need of the Churches coming 
to some agreement and understanding by which, either 
through direct cooperation or the partition of territorial 
responsibility, they can throw masses of material sup- 
port into unchurched, or foreign speaking, or rapidly 
changing communities for the sake of Christianity's 
getting a quick hold where otherwise everything will 
fall apart, morally speaking. Here again the Church 
must be on guard so to make its grants as to call forth 
all the latent strength of the community itself. At the 
start such communities may require practically all the 
resources from outside. But they should not be helped 
a day longer than is required to develop their own self- 
reliance. It might conceivably be good policy for a 
denomination to throw all its available power for some 
years into a given locality. And then for another period 
of years to throw none of its material there. It is well 
for us all to remember what help is. Help is certainly 
not such direct aid as to leave the aided organization 
nothing to do of itself. Help is aid in cooperation with 
effort on the part of the beneficiary. 

A further illustration of the possibility of ethical 
laxity in church finance can be seen in the aid given to 
or withheld from denominational educational institu- 
tions. The denominational colleges of the country have 



THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 51 

been and are a part of the glory of the American educa- 
tional system. The virtue of such institutions has been 
not so much in the excellence of the expert instruction 
as in the ideals that have prevailed in the colleges, and 
in the Christian atmosphere. The view of the world 
from the college window has been Christian and the 
spirit of service has been Christian. We recognize to- 
day a quasi-personality of social institutions, — colleges 
among the number. The youth who becomes a member 
of such a body partakes of the indefinable virtues and 
vitalities of the body itself. The school puts its mark 
upon him, — a mark which he never would have known if 
he had studied alone at home or if he had been lost as 
an infinitesimal freshman in a huge university. "We 
have all this in the back of our minds when we speak 
of the tradition of the school, — or of the school spirit, — 
or of the school stamp. 

Once more we may take advantage of the apparent 
coldbloodedness of Professor Palmer's advice. Inas- 
much as the process of education is so costly that social 
groups must undertake this process at an expense which 
never can be met by the students themselves, — an ex- 
pense which rightly calls for appropriations from all 
the funds which are legitimately at the disposal of a 
denomination, — we may properly insist upon a prefer- 
ence for the schools which are doing the best work. Put 
the tools into the hands of those who can use them best ! 
The teaching of the parable of the pounds, which has 
been so often enforced, is in place here. To take away 
the one pound from the servant who had carefully kept 
it wrapped up in a napkin is indeed a cruelty if the 
pound is something to eat ; but if the pound is an instru- 
ment with which to work it morally belongs to the man 



52 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

who knows how to expand one pound into ten. Inas- 
much as the Church is doing so much to support educa- 
tional institutions the only ethical grant of the money 
is to give it to those who can put it to the wisest use. 

This will of course be met by protest from poverty- 
stricken colleges all over the country. We shall be told 
of the devotion of the founders of other days, of the 
possibility of the professor's coming close to a student 
in a small school, and of the intensity of the religious 
spirit that prevails in such schools, — all of which is in- 
teresting but may be irrelevant. The educational tools 
of the present day are costly and delicately contrived, 
loaded with possibilities of good and ill. They belong 
only to those who can wield them aright. There is a 
world of suggestion in the old adage that it is the busi- 
ness of the college to teach the young idea how to shoot. 
Freedom of thought is safe only in the countries where 
the young idea knows how to shoot straight, — and to 
point at the targets worth hitting. It will not do for 
Society to be subjected to a fusillade from young ideas 
that have been imperfectly trained to shoot. 

This may be seized upon by some who maintain that 
it is a waste of money for the Church to be devoting 
large sums at the present time in direct appropriations 
to educational institutions. We have no patience with 
such objection. We shall have occasion to say later 
that we believe most heartily that one of the chief obliga- 
tions of the Church of to-day is to train its membership 
in hard thinking. And around the hard thinking should 
be the genuinely Christian atmosphere. We are all 
willing to admit that there is no good reason why the 
Church should go to expense for technical schools or uni- 
versities for advanced intellectual research. But no 



THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 53 

education is even liberal unless it is founded upon a 
liberal view of the world, of the dignity and worth of 
human life, and of the forces which play through the 
world. The college is the place for an introduction to a 
general world-view, and in that world view the Christian 
perspective should be regnant. It is significant to note 
that among the first items asked for in the recent Inter- 
Church Campaign was the sum of one hundred millions 
of dollars to be devoted outright in grants of aid to 
educational institutions. 

If any factors in our present life need Christianization 
the educational need that Christianization. There are 
inherent tendencies in educational systems which are 
away from the best, and any amount of money is well 
spent that will counteract the downward pull of such 
gravitations. For example, the teaching profession itself 
tends to become a vested interest. It is natural that 
after men have spent thousands of dollars in fitting 
themselves to instruct in a specialty they should not care 
to see that specialty lose its importance in the eyes of 
Society. So we have many programs bolstered up that 
are of dubious value to the growing youth of the com- 
munity. What hardship has not the adolescent mind of 
generation after generation suffered from ever-emphasis 
on the classics and mathematics ! A student has worried 
with Latin for eight years, for example, and has left the 
last recitation with relief that he will never have to look 
at Latin again. Most of such over-emphasis comes be- 
cause we have groups of teachers who can teach such 
branches and nothing else. All that saves us from the 
tyranny of such vested interests is the general good 
sense of the community. The Church should have the 
same good sense and ask at least this question, — "What 



54 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

kind of intellect is the college turning out?" Is not 
Christianity synonymous with good sense? 

The second danger in educational institutions against 
which the power of great educational funds in the hands 
of the Church can well guard is the over-development 
of the technically scientific spirit, though the scientific 
temper as such should be claimed for the Kingdom. 
Science moves largely in the realm of method. She 
deals with instruments, — especially instruments of pre- 
cision. There must, we repeat, be a closer alliance than 
ever between the Church and the scientific temper. The 
Church's ideal of the worth of a human life has indeed 
so far influenced modern thought that there is little 
danger of our American institutions running to the ex- 
tremes of barren technicalism. But the emphasis on the 
human values must not be lifted. A friend of the writ- 
er's was once visiting a Latin- American country famous 
for a medical institution which was technically of high 
excellence. In particular, a marvelous technique for de- 
veloping vaccine for smallpox had been perfected in the 
institution. The establishment was justly celebrated 
for this specialty, but there was more neglected and 
ignored smallpox in a given radius around that institu- 
tion than in any other like territory in South America. 
When the visitor from North America tried to point out 
this unfortunate coincidence he was met by an uncom- 
prehending stare. The events of the past war have 
revealed to us all too clearly what to expect when high 
scientific proficiency becomes harnessed to a low human 
ideal. 

We are not among those who fancy that this problem 
of the Christianization of education can be adequately 
met by such campaigns as that to put the Bible in 



THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 55 

the public schools. Through cooperative efforts the 
Churches are beginning to take account as never before 
of the essentials of Christian ideals for humanity upon 
which we can all agree. The Christian Church has a 
right to insist that at least in its broad outlines this 
human ideal is to be kept central in the instruction of 
the American youth. No worthier object of Christian 
philanthropy can be found than this of maintaining the 
exalted human reference in all study. One of the most 
welcome signs in American educational life is the willing- 
ness of the state universities to cooperate with the 
churches which try to put near the campuses of the 
universities prophets of moral and spiritual power who 
will interpret the Christian ideals. The state universi- 
ties have in the past fifteen years taken long strides in 
the humanization of their systems of instruction, but of 
course they cannot give themselves to specifically re- 
ligious activities. If the Christian churches would, at 
whatever direct cost, put opposite the buildings of the 
state universities pulpits or platforms for outstanding 
religious leaders they would render a surpassingly legiti- 
mate service, — no matter what the expense might be. 
If this were a denominational competitive propaganda it 
would be all wrong. If it were the filling the minds of 
students with Christian ideals it would be all right. 

The indirect effect of the Church upon education has 
already been immeasurable. It was formerly assumed 
that the ministry and the teaching profession were the 
chief spheres in which the ideal of service was to rule. 
If a boy studied engineering or medicine or law he of 
course worked with the expectation of being able to make 
money for himself. This was especially true of the field 
of law. But even this field, to say nothing of the others, 



56 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

has been invaded healthfully by the ideals of substan- 
tially Christian service. Probably the greatest single 
group of the brightest minds of Harvard University is 
to be found in the Harvard Law School. This would 
be appalling if it were not that the ideals of social service 
now markedly govern the instruction at the Harvard 
Law School. 

This chapter is intended to be merely illustrative of 
the responsibilities of the Church as she pours out her 
treasures in direct gift by appropriating boards. The 
purpose of the Church is to hold the Christian ideal on 
high. We speak often of the broadening influences at 
work in the life of Christianity to-day. Perhaps it 
would be permissible to say that many of these are in a 
legitimate meaning narrowing influences, — narrowing 
the Church down to all-essentials, — the idea of God, — 
the relation between God and man. In all her use of her 
material resources the duty of the Church is one and the 
same, and this duty really gives unity to this somewhat 
rambling citing of illustrations. But what gives per- 
tinence to the discussion is the peculiarity of human na- 
ture to take less seriously the responsibility for the dis- 
tribution of money by voted grant-in-aid than the respon- 
sibility of directly buying goods and paying salaries and 
wages. "With the grant of aid the trustee often thinks 
his responsibility ended. But he is mistaken. If the 
Church gives bread and water and garments to the man 
who is hungry and thirsty and cold, the gift takes the 
significance not just from the relief from suffering, but 
from the fact that certain goods are due all those with 
whom Christ has identified himself. The gift given to 
one of the least of these is given also unto him. The 
same ideal rules in the use of religious and educational 



THE CHURCH AS PHILANTHROPIST 57 

and all other benevolent instrumentalities, — the ideal of 
human values toward which every instrument should be 
brought into play with its greatest effectiveness. Money 
is the spirit of service hardened into concrete substance. 
When the Church wastes or misuses this divine instru- 
ment it is not only misusing a tool, but is wasting the con- 
secrated saintliness which made the tool possible. And 
the tool itself makes for the wide circulation of saintli- 
ness, — gives it purchasing power, — and carries the Gospel 
ideal into places that the saint could never personally 
reach without this wonderful instrument for the exten- 
sion of his power. 

Here may be as fitting a place as any to protect our- 
selves by a discrimination in our use of the term "mere" 
instrument. When throughout this essay we say that 
human values are to be held superior to instrumental 
values we mean that instrumental factors are to be kept 
in the instrumental place, and not pursued as ends-in- 
themselves, or as producers of selfish profit. Viewed as 
instruments many material factors are unspeakably val- 
uable, — valuable enough to call forth all the energies of 
the human will in their quest. A seeker of money may 
appear to us a frenzied fool until we learn that what he 
seeks is an instrument which will open the eyes of a 
blind child or that will carry bread to a famine-stricken 
nation. All materials are ''mere" compared with the 
human benefit which they themselves bring to mankind ; 
but the very worth of those benefits bestows worth on the 
materials. Quinine in a malaria-ridden pest hole, diph- 
theria anti-toxin in a plague-stricken home, chloroform 
on a battlefield, wheat for the starving, and coal for the 
freezing, tools for necessary work of the world, — all these 
are matter, but matter of such serviceableness that upon 



58 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

a critical occasion a man might well risk his own life 
that these merely physical goods may get into the hands 
of those who desperately need them. 



CHAPTER V 

CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 

The writer recently attended a meeting of churchmen 
at which the possibility of securing more money for 
presentation of the bearing of the Gospel on the social 
question was brought forward as a reason for closer 
union among the churches. This argument was no 
sooner mentioned than one somewhat excited brother 
protested that union for such a purpose was altogether 
aside from the true aim of the Christian Church. He 
avowed that plans for expenditure to enlighten Christian 
communities as to social duties should have no place with 
organizations whose chief calling is to save souls. 

In spite of protests like this those who are pressing 
for closer church union insist that one of their main 
hopes, if not the main hope, is to secure more adequate 
resources for remolding the thought and purpose of 
Christian communities as to the social conditions under 
which men live, — and that because it is indeed the func- 
tion of the Church to save the souls of men. This evan- 
gelistic aim being primary it is entirely legitimate for 
the Church to further any policies which will push soul- 
winning farther and make it easier. Quite likely 
evangelism will not hereafter make so limited an appeal 
to individuals as our fathers heard. The Church is pro- 
ceeding on a safe course when she refuses to recognize 
longer the artificial division between the individual Gos- 
pel and the social Gospel, for social conditions are to-day 

59 



60 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

the chief obstacles to winning individuals for the King- 
dom ; and individuals show that they are Christian most 
convincingly when they seek to make the social order 
Christian. 

It is urged that we must reach individuals as indi- 
viduals if we are to be saviors of men. Who denies 
this? The Church has a right, however, to protest that 
salvation is not to be compressed within a tight round of 
personal duties. The race has through the centuries 
worked out a code of moral obligations which are indeed 
now sun-clear as binding upon the consciences of Chris- 
tians. Men are not to lie or to steal or to be cruel to 
their families or ugly to their neighbors. Progress in 
Christian living, though, consists in including more and 
more persons within the reach of righteous contact and 
more and more deeds under the Christian law. The 
abominable separation between secular and sacred took 
its start from the proneness of Christian morality to 
settle upon those manifest personal religious obligations 
which are self-evidently binding. Outside of this little 
circle the moral obligations have not always been clear ; 
and the outer field has therefore become secular in that 
here men have felt free to do about as they have pleased 
inasmuch as no Christian law has seemed to be imme- 
diately applicable. 

Sections of the wider territory are now being pre- 
empted for colonization by Christian morality. The 
social consequences of some sources of conduct which we 
formerly looked upon as morally harmless or indifferent 
have been seen through and pronounced evil. Once 
these evil results are evident the obligations of the Chris- 
tian conscience are as indubitable as the age-old virtues 
of abhorrence of lying and stealing. The purpose of all 



CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 61 

evangelistic effort is to touch the central springs of the 
will, — to persuade the wills of men into harmony with 
the will of God. If, however, the immense sums now 
being contemplated for evangelistic campaigns do not 
look to an extension of the obligations of the trans- 
formed life beyond the narrowly personal the evangelism 
will not be fully Christian. We indeed strive for the 
transformation of individuals, but at such a transforma- 
tion of individuals that they will themselves demand 
that the evangelistic spirit is to be carried into all the 
relationships of life. 

But what do Christian leaders to-day mean when they 
speak of duty to evangelize institutions? Are not in- 
stitutions impersonal? As organizational tools institu- 
tions are indeed impersonal. But institutions in another 
aspect are persons behaving in definite ways when they 
come together in institutional comradeships. Human 
beings within these institutional unions often act differ- 
ently from their behavior outside. And there are well- 
known laws of group psychology according to which men 
attain powers in groups which they would never grasp as 
loose and independent units. It is the purpose of the 
Gospel to redeem even these group activities, declaring 
that as members of institutions men shall act according 
to the spirit of the Gospel. 

But what has this to do with the saving of souls? 
One thing it has to do with the saving of souls is to 
remove most formidable obstacles to the spread of the 
Kingdom of God to-day, those obstacles being the glar- 
ing contradictions between the spiritual conduct of mul- 
titudes of men in the narrowed personal rounds and 
their conduct in their institutional activity as members 
of an industrial system, or of a warlike nation, or of a 



62 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

professedly superior race. If it is true that we have 
developed many surpassing types of saintliness in the 
intimate personal duties it is also true that these same 
saints often act like barbarians or savages or wild beasts 
when they join hands as partisans of a political view, or 
as competitors in an industrial order, or as citizens of a 
nation bent on war. This is not cynicism. It is but 
recognition that the Christianization of the human being 
is progressive. One who is Christian in his inner per- 
sonal circle may be far from Christian in his business or 
his politics or his patriotism. And in international con- 
tacts there is not as yet any faint flush of the dawn of 
Christian internationalism conceived of as a public opin- 
ion sworn to push Christian principles into international 
policy. This limitation of Christian obligation to the 
immediately personal causes the outsider to pass Chris- 
tianity by as of little consequence, or at best as an affair 
of intimate individual privacy. 

The Christian Church is not working for the remaking 
of the more inclusive social relationships just for the 
sake of dabbling in something which is none of her busi- 
ness. Her impulse springs out of a realization that the 
imperfectly moralized institutional activities are to-day 
a hindrance to saving the souls of men. Grant that 
many foolish radicals assail existing institutions without 
the slightest spiritual motive ; that many yearners after 
the mystic in religion are distressed by over-emphasis on 
a social Gospel which lacks glow of warm richness of 
feeling. Concede that it is possible to galvanize an in- 
dividualism which professedly sets itself against a social 
point of view into a show of effectiveness by huge audi- 
toriums and mammoth choruses and thunderous brass 
bands and furious exhortations to hit a sawdust trail: 



CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 63 

the Kingdom of heaven tarrieth even after full use of 
such methods. The Gospel does not quite mean — "every 
man for himself and the devil take the hindmost/ ' We 
admit this sounds unjust but some extreme individualism 
is so self -centered as almost to warrant such a charac- 
terization. 

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. 
What did Jesus mean? Suppose he meant what he 
said, that in the Kingdom of Heaven those filled with the 
spirit of the Kingdom would be the masters of the re- 
sources of the earth. Obviously in this respect the 
Kingdom has not yet come. Fancy grouping together 
the owners of the earth in some vast assembly, — the 
possessors of the great landed properties, the holders of 
the mines, the controllers of the oil-wells, the masters of 
the railroad and steamship lines, and then flaunt over 
them a banner inscribed, • ' Blessed are the meek for they 
shall inherit the earth." The most charitable interpre- 
tation of such an inscription would be that we had got 
our labels mixed. And yet that one contradiction stands 
stubbornly in the path of the spread of Scriptural 
Christianity throughout the earth. The charge that 
Christianity has failed is absurd : but we too often reply 
that Christianity cannot justly be called a failure where 
it has not been tried. This is altogether too easy and 
can be in turn met by the further query, — Why has 
Christianity not been tried? The answer is that the 
evangelization of masses of men in their industrial and 
international relationships is a task of such prodigious 
size as to involve almost a transformation of the social 
climate. Individualistic evangelization is like giving a 
man a fire for his own hearthstone as compared to trans- 
formations of the cosmic system which will beget new and 



64 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

warmer airs for a world population. The transforma- 
tion has indeed to come through individuals, but the 
individuals must cooperate and the cooperative effort is 
to stretch out to such extent that until now resources 
have been altogether inadequate. The wealth required 
will indeed be stupendous, demanding an altogether re- 
adjusted focus in our perspective as to expenditure. 
Yet we shall have to make the re-adjustment if our ex- 
penditure is to be thoroughly Christian. The task here 
is somewhat like that of stamping out cholera or typhoid 
fever. Individual physicians are not enough. For 
thousands of housewives to boil water is not enough. 
The whole watershed which furnishes water to cities 
must be kept pure by community cooperation. 

For the sake of a further glimpse at the formidable- 
ness of the duty before the Church let us reflect for a 
moment that the task implies nothing short of re-fashion- 
ing public opinion. Whatever the channel of public 
authority at a given epoch selfish forces seek to get hold 
of that channel and use it for their own purposes. 
Finance thus for long manipulated legislatures. Now 
Finance seeks the outright manufacture of public opin- 
ion, — the controlling power at the present hour. This 
does not mean the subsidizing of kept editors to make 
whatever comment their masters wish so much as the 
manipulation of the news itself. Probably most of what 
we read in newspapers and magazines about industrial 
and international matters is true, — but it is half -true and 
out of perspective. If the Christian Church could main- 
tain an organ for the publication of the whole truth, — 
or all the relevant facts — it could quickly change the 
most serious conditions in industry and international 
relationships. The fact — admitted before the United 



CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 65 

States Senate Commission — that financial concerns inter- 
ested in Mexico pay one publicity agent $20,000 a year to 
see that the United States newspapers are duly informed 
as to all the horrors of Mexico, gives a hint as to the 
expense confronting the Church if it takes seriously the 
problem of informing public opinion on international 
matters. Is there a Church official in the United States 
receiving $20,000 a year ? But the great expense would 
be worth while. The people can be trusted when they 
know. 

Early in Christian history the believers in the new 
faith were called those of the Way. Jesus referred to 
himself as the Way. When he spoke of sinners he often 
charitably treated them as stumblers, and upon one oc- 
casion broke out almost fiercely upon those who put 
stumbling blocks before even the least of those walking 
upon the Christian highway. While this is all figure of 
speech it is rhetoric deeply imbedded in the oldest strata 
of the Gospel. We shall never cease speaking of the 
Christian life as a Way. How odd that the legitimate 
implications of this figure have so long escaped the 
Christian understanding! Can we imagine any one ex- 
pression which could suggest a social responsibility more 
unmistakably than that of keeping a road in order! 
No state will allow the care of its roads to be turned over 
to private citizens. The building of the road and its 
upkeep are distinctively social functions. With this 
rich suggestiveness the Christian way is in the keeping 
of the Christian Church. How absurd then to speak of 
a Christian life as if it were to be forever the overcoming 
of obstacles that have no proper place in the road ! The 
Christian life is not meant to be a leaping over hurdles 
just as an exhibition in spiritual athletics. It is some 



66 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

day to be a natural and uninterrupted progress along a 
road so smooth that a child can travel it without danger 
of falling. Some lives are so heedless and slovenly that 
they will stumble on any road, but that does not relieve 
the Church of responsibility for leveling down the moun- 
tains and rilling up the valleys and making smooth the 
pathway for the child of God. If it be objected that 
we are laying stress on "environment" our reply is that 
a road is indeed environment, but that it is an environ- 
ment that reveals the degree of consciousness of moral 
and human responsibility of the citizens through whose 
kingdom the road passes. Roads are supposed to be 
kept in repair, to be freed from robbers, and to be so 
built that travelers can march over them easily and 
smoothly to their destinations. We all may fitly pray 
for the deeper coming of the Kingdom to individual wills 
who voluntarily surrender to the will of God, and we 
may then as fitly show our sincerity by going forth to 
make the road so easy that the difficulties of progress 
will be reduced to the minimum. 

Keeping to this New Testament figure we may say 
that up to date traveling on the Christian way has been 
so much given to keeping out of pitfalls, to climbing over 
needless barriers and to dodging robbers that the traveler 
has had little chance to view the landscapes through 
which he has passed, — or to make rapid enough progress 
toward the fair city which is his goal. There is no New 
Testament warrant for fighting unnecessary temptations 
or bearing unnecessary crosses. Make the world as good 
as we can, there will remain temptation enough to test 
the strongest soul. Much of the argument against the 
removal of the social, international, racial obstacles to 
Christianity to-day is about on a par with that of those 



CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 67 

wise defenders of the now defunct saloon who insisted 
that saloons should line the highway for the sake of 
developing in youth moral strength enough to resist the 
temptation to enter. Men put this argument with grave 
faces whose sole business was to make youth enter. To 
urge a day-laborer to be Christian with all the obstacles 
put in the path by social institutions of an unchristian- 
ized industry, to ask a Chinaman or a negro to tread a 
path almost buried under international and social preju- 
dice, borders upon the tragic. 

It is the business of the Church to make the road as 
easy as possible, for it will be steep and stony enough 
at best. The distances to be traveled toward spiritual 
ideals will themselves tax the most exuberant strength 
and the toughest endurance. "We have said that the 
Church is to hold aloft the spiritual ideals and to make 
them winsome and magnetic through the manifestation 
of the spirit of the Christ. Suppose we employ another 
terminology for the moment and say that it is the busi- 
ness of the Church to make it easy for men to pursue 
the good, the true and the beautiful. The conquest of 
the good is indeed a mighty moral triumph but who ap- 
plauds the triumph? It should be the duty of the 
Church to create an atmosphere in which applause for 
the good deeds does not have to be coaxed or coached, 
but leaps spontaneously to the lips of the world itself. 

What is it that buoys up the heart of the soldier in 
the long, dreary marches of the campaign? We say 
"marches of the campaign " advisedly, for there may be 
something about the intoxication of battle which sweeps 
men out of themselves. The sternness of war is the 
drudgery. What carries soldiers through the drudgery 
is not only the flag for which they are fighting, but the 



68 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

awareness of marching in step with the spiritual com- 
panionship of a nation. So in the long marches and 
campaigns toward the Kingdom of God the struggle of 
the Church to make public opinion in which moral war- 
fare becomes easy will be an imperative duty. We can- 
not imagine the result in moral achievement if we could 
break loose from the doctrine of negative triumph over 
obstacles to the doctrine of positive victory. Suppose 
we could, through the resources of the Church, at least 
make the beginnings of a society in which men would not 
have to conquer artificial enemies or brave public senti- 
ment before they began positively and constructively to 
serve : and in which they would find industry and society 
and politics pouring inspiration on them after they be- 
gan to serve. Suppose the Church could present men 
with opportunities for service in a society already 
thoroughly imbued with a cooperative spirit so that the 
effort of each could be caught up by the reenforcing 
comradeship of all: or suppose the Church could create 
an atmosphere of expectation of highest Christian 
achievement from workers and could crown their deeds 
with the laurel of wise praise, — what of the successes 
of evangelism in such a supposed world? 

Evangelism, then, the center of Christian effort, but 
with large-scale attempt toward a new climate or en- 
vironment in which evangelism can urge a redemption 
of all man's activities — this is a policy which would war- 
rant a Church expenditure beyond anything which 
Protestantism has seen. Granting the above as the 
Christian policy of outlay for the Church, there are im- 
plications not to be overlooked. 

Some radicals were moved to mirth by a defense of the 
existing capitalistic system recently advanced by one 



CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 69 

anxious to do ample credit to that system. The capital- 
ists serve, said this defender, by being spenders. Hu- 
morous as this seems when we think of some objects that 
capitalism spends for, there is yet a truth in the defense 
which ought not to be laughed out of court. Putting to 
one side all the absurdities of extravagance and all the 
vulgarities of personal display, let us not forget that 
possessors of funds serve Society when they devote them- 
selves to right spending. We have seen little serious 
argument to prove that if state socialism came suddenly 
into power in a country like ours the state would be any 
better spender than the private holders of capital. 
There would be at least under such socialism magnificent 
opportunity for wastefulness of which legislators might 
not be slow to take advantage. The vulgar expression 
that public finances are in the eyes of legislators a pork 
barrel suggests about what we might expect from state 
socialism when it came first to the open treasury door. 
It may have been some suspicion of grim possibilities 
here that caused the remark attributed to Bernard Shaw 
that if he were a multi-millionaire, anxious to bestow 
benefit on the public, he would spend his money on 
objects which the public would not itself think of foster- 
ing. This, of course, partakes of the usual Shavian in- 
temperance, but the remark has some pertinence. The 
power to spend money brings heavy responsibilities. 
The public will in the end sanction expenditures of a 
true wholesomeness, but the public does not of itself 
always spontaneously think of such objects of expense. 
We have spoken of the responsibility of the Church 
so to wield her financial power to create a world which 
will encourage good doing, — and which will push evan- 
gelism forward to an all-inclusive program. May we 



70 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

now say that this involves an obligation upon the Church, 
especially in these critical moments, for the stimulation 
of hard thinking. This can only mean encouragement 
of discerning judgments by competent social critics, the 
publication of many utterances for which there may not 
be at the outset a wide-spread demand, the cultivation 
of a popular temper for thorough-going religious argu- 
ment. The Church ought to help create a market for 
the finest intellectual wares. It is a serious reflection 
upon Protestant Christianity that leaders of Christian 
thinking have many times to hesitate as to whether it is 
worth while to attempt to publish discussions of the 
weightier religious problems. In scientific circles al- 
ready enough of interest in discovery as such, has been 
generated to make possible the support of publications 
which mark advances in scientific knowledge. There is 
not much corresponding to this among the Christian 
churches. One of the tragedies of the course of Protest- 
ant history in the last quarter century has been the 
difficulty of getting patronage for adequate treatments 
of profound religious themes except for writers given to 
sensationalism or possessed of an unusually brilliant 
style. So it has come to pass that even Christian preach- 
ers have looked outside the Church to students like Mr. 
"Wells for the formulation of newer statements of the- 
ology, — this too when the problems merely on the intel- 
lectual side are more intricate and complex and call for 
more power of sustained reflection than in any epoch 
since the Church fathers. Criticize the Roman Church 
all we please, at least in the earlier centuries that church 
achieved a union of piety and intellectual power which 
is one of the marvels of history. We can no longer ex- 
pect Church leaders to be encyclopedias of knowledge. 



CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 71 

But if they are not to develop genuine intellectual en- 
ergy they will fall short of their full Christian function. 
The saints of the early Church were often the scholars 
and thinkers. Even those who surrendered themselves 
to the severest practical tasks found opportunity for the 
exercise of intellectual talents: they conceived of them- 
selves as worshiping God by the sheer intensity of their 
thinking. "With a sound spiritual instinct the Church 
praised such high discipline. So far as we know there 
was no sneering at mental effort in churchmen in the 
old days when the Church was making some of its most 
practical conquests. 

In the later time we find ourselves utterly amazed at 
the terrific brain vitality of a man like Las Casas. Here 
was a reformer so devoted to freeing the natives of the 
"West Indian Islands as to bring down upon his head 
the wrath of all the colonial officials of his day, — a radi- 
cal scorned as a wild dreamer. Yet when the records of 
his life are studied he stands forth as a student of human 
conditions to whom nothing that concerned man was 
empty of interest. He is revealed as a master of the 
knowledge of the Christian centuries before his time. 
WTien the supreme crisis for his defense of the Indians 
before the Church council arrives he appears as the 
ablest debater of his age. After the lapse of nearly 
four centuries his scholarly narratives are the basis on 
which historians of the period of the Spanish exploration 
of the New World must build. Now in all this Las 
Casas was not merely the individual of surpassing native 
endowment; he was the child of his Church, — a church 
which with Christian discernment insisted that the dis- 
cipline of the mind is one of the heaviest Christian ob- 
ligations. 



72 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

It may help us here to take more seriously the welfare 
of the church constituency committed to our charge. 
An illuminating story has come from a Russian district 
which passed through first the "white" terror and then 
the "red" terror. After the Bolshevists had established 
their system they increased the supply of physicians in 
the community by decreeing that hospital internes be 
recognized as trained physicians. Shortly thereafter 
the afflicted community protested that worse than the 
white terror or the red terror was this new "green" 
terror. It is our duty to spare congregations the dis- 
tress of the green terror. 

As with the intellectual pursuits so also with the 
pursuit of the beautiful. It will prove a miserable epoch 
in the history of the Church if the increasing control of 
financial resources does not accomplish something to end 
the divorce between religion and art. The Puritan is 
needed in every age to bring us back to moral first prin- 
ciples and to focus our attention upon the primary will- 
to-do-right. But the Puritan is to be supplemented by 
the Christian of bigger mold, lest art be driven away 
from the believers to the Philistines. A critic of the 
Christian Church exclaimed in the early months of the 
war that Christianity had shown its moral bankruptcy 
through the shriller outcry over the injuries to the 
cathedral at Rheims than over the death of soldiers on 
battlefields. The point seemed to be that Christianity 
was more aesthetic than human. So far as we now re- 
call, it was not the Christian Church that lost its balance 
in any such outcry. Moreover when the leaders of the 
Christian Church protested against the despoiling of the 
cathedral the protest was not merely against the defama- 
tion of a treasure of art. The Middle Aj2e cathedrals of 



CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 73 

Europe tower skyward not merely as art masterpieces in 
themselves, but as manifestations of the achievements 
possible when an entire community is surcharged at once 
with the religious spirit, and the artistic impulse, and 
the sentiment of human brotherhood. The cathedrals 
are not the achievement of any small group of geniuses. 
They would not have been possible except in social groups 
whose closeness of organic unity has not been surpassed 
in the history of the race. All classes of workers 
wrought together, fired by the desire to create a stupen- 
dous material expression of an artistic instinct which had 
become religious, and of a religious spirit which was 
seeking outlet in the finest of physical forms. Nothing 
since the cathedral days has approached this triumph of 
merging the spirit of brotherhood with enthusiasm for 
religion and art. 

Here again the Roman Catholics have best held to a 
high ideal. A Protestant Church in a great city has 
often debated a change of location because of removal of 
its constituency. The Roman Catholics have indicated a 
willingness to buy the Protestant building, chiefly for 
the sake of preserving the spire, — a miracle of grace and 
symmetry which dominates a vast field of view. 

Man does not live by bread alone. The too heavy 
emphasis, however, upon the basic utilities of life has 
pushed apart elements that should have been kept to- 
gether. Intellect has become skeptical, art has become 
irreverent and religion has lost itself in the routine of 
the commonplace. Henceforward each of these activi- 
ties must move in a more or less separate circle, but their 
reunion, at least to a degree, is one of the tasks of the 
greater Church. Since its beginning Protestantism has 
been chronically poor. One of its obligations in this 



74 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

newer day, when supporters of religious enterprises 
seem willing to think in terms of millions rather than 
of hundreds and of thousands, is to open again the chan- 
nels for the loftier forms of worship. The fundamental 
task of the Church in its use of its resources is to make it 
easy for men to do the will of God in an atmosphere 
which normally and naturally suggests obedience to the 
divine. But at whatever cost the Church must also in- 
sist that obedience to the divine will is not complete until 
we think God's thoughts after Him, and until we seek 
expression for that thought in beauty permeated with 
the divine. An ardent worshiper once declared that she 
could never listen to a great organ in an American 
Church without realizing with a pang that the cost of the 
organ would have provided a dozen Protestant chapels 
in China. It would perhaps be too severe to suggest 
that upon the occasion of a like comment One in the 
olden time gently rebuked those who declared that the 
alabaster box should have been sold and the money given 
to the poor. Perhaps a more suitable reply to the good 
woman so anxious about China, would be that full Chris- 
tianity will not have come to China until more than a 
dozen chapels are replaced by temples in which the 
Chinese themselves shall hear organ strains pealing forth 
in intrinsically Christian beauty. 

To sum up, the most truly Christian expenditure is 
for evangelism, — but for an evangelism that redeems all 
of man's nature and activities, reaching forth to those 
wider relationships which in the end involve the veritable 
transformation of the world's social climate. If some 
perplexed saint protests that the social gospel never 
saved anybody the adequate reply is, — possibly not, but 
because the saints have lacked a social gospel many lives 



CHRISTIAN EXPENDITURE 75 

have not responded to an individual gospel. If objec- 
tion arises that all this emphasis on money seems un- 
christian the answer is that such objection has never 
realized the seriousness of the present-day religious task. 
Before the social atmosphere can be finally made Chris- 
tian the churches will probably have to turn their build- 
ings over to school room purposes for religious education 
by experts all the days of the week. All of this at great 
cost. Why? Simply because there is no other way, — 
and the work must be done. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 



The schemes for more adequate church advance almost 
all contemplate the accumulation of funds in the power 
of the Church which will have to be put into investment. 
Enthusiastic leaders of interdenominational programs 
talk of enormous buildings in New York City which by 
their very height will at least symbolize to the world 
something of the importance of Protestantism. Funds 
are to be gathered for all varieties of endowments. Ed- 
ucational equipments, hospitals, institutional churches 
are to draw upon endowments abundantly adequate, and 
retired preachers and teachers are to be supported from 
the income of investments. 

Of course the social radicals protest against the income 
from any endowment funds. Such radicals insist that 
a worker is entitled to the full produce of his labor, and 
that interest payments are a tribute exacted from the 
laborer by those fortunate enough to hold legal title to 
the invested funds. Interest is unearned by the hold- 
ers of bonds and other securities. 

We do not believe that such assailants of income from 
investments have ever made out their case. There is 
something of social service in the accumulation of funds 
to be used productively even though we cannot accu- 
rately indicate the limits of the service. The ability to 
get money together and to keep money together may be 
a social virtue. When we reflect upon the almost in- 

76 



THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 77 

evitable tendency of money to get away from the ordi- 
nary man we must concede at least a measure of justifi- 
cation of return from funds in the social service rendered 
in the gathering of the funds and in their conservation. 
This, of course, is not intended as an exoneration of 
exorbitant or dishonest returns, nor is it intended as 
justification for saddling on industry the burden of mak- 
ing profits for "water" or monopoly values. It is 
against these last that the socialist attack has unerring 
pertinence. 

But to carry the reflection a little farther, suppose 
some species of state socialism should descend upon us 
over night. The new order would find itself in the pres- 
ence of accumulated funds now being used for religious 
purposes. The cry might at once arise for the outright 
confiscation of such funds. Let us suppose that the 
funds should thus be confiscated. If Society understood 
itself it would shortly find that it would have to set apart 
from the social income for just such purposes as the 
philanthropic and religious agencies had been serving 
amounts equal to the returns yielded by the confiscated 
endowments. For the resources of which we are speak- 
ing in this essay are thought of as devoted to genuine 
social purposes, — purposes without whose realization so- 
ciety would quickly find itself at a serious loss. 

The critic urges, however, that under such socialism 
society itself would be the authority in the disposition 
of the social income and not ecclesiastical officials. This 
may be true, but forthwith a host of vexatious questions 
spring upon us. The organ of society as a whole is the 
State. If the churches have to look to the State for 
appropriations to religious enterprises the old vexed 
question of the relation of Church and State is with us 



78 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

again. Moreover, deplore it as we may, the tendency of 
our time is toward questioning distrust of State manage- 
ment. "We may be doubtful whether if socialism comes 
it will be state socialism. The State may indeed own 
some basic resources of the country. Many such re- 
sources might properly be nationalized, — mineral and 
forest riches, irrigation and water power streams, in- 
dustries like the railroads which are vital to the life of 
the nation as such. A legitimate argument can be made 
for such nationalization, but not much of an argument in 
the light of present-day experience for the management 
of such enterprises by the State itself. State handling 
of economic instruments is liable to be choked by red 
tape, or smothered in the dust of bureaucracies. The 
centralization of power involved in such management is 
so complete that the people fear the State and hedge it 
about with all possible checks and restraints. In the 
new order Society would probably have to hand over to 
the churches sums of money to be used by the churches 
themselves. 

"We admit that we have not yet squarely met the so- 
cialistic attack on interest. The socialist holds that if 
society were directly taxed for religious and philan- 
thropic purposes the tax would be paid by those better 
able to pay it than are the laborers out of whose earn- 
ings the socialist declares that interest now comes. We 
think that the argument here tells more heavily against 
some forms of dividends than against interest, — interest 
being more in the open, seldom rising to more than five 
per cent, and ordinarily going more directly to reward 
thrift than does the return from stocks. The unearned 
increment, strictly speaking, does not figure here. The 
burden of proof is on the socialist. We cannot see that 



THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 79 

he has made out his case against interest, — except in- 
terest on * 'water' ' and on properties accumulated un- 
socially. It would indeed be a grim joke to have any 
set of workers reproducing in interest every twenty 
years a sum equal to the principal of a gain originally 
acquired unsocially or anti-socially. In other days the 
foundations of some fortunes which have held together 
for centuries were laid in piracy, or slave-trade, or the 
sale of alcoholic liquors, or in food-adulteration. Is it 
not bracing to think of the interest returns on such 
fortunes, and of what they amount to in the course of 
an heir's life-time ? But even this is not quite conclusive. 
Apart from the question as to the genesis of a fortune is 
the question as to the use to which the fortune is now 
being put. 

The most attractive theory of socialism to-day is gild- 
socialism, in which Society is conceived of as united 
under a federalist principle, with constituent groups 
working according to their own genius and spirit. If 
we ever arrive at such gild-socialism there is nothing to 
forbid the prophecy that the Church will be conceived 
of as one of the bodies of Society, ruling itself according 
to its own law. Even under gild-socialism economic 
gilds might make a modest return to the Church for 
the privilege of using some of the Church's investment 
funds. In any case if these are expended wisely the 
expenditure will have to go forward under the initiative 
of the Church itself, even if there is some checking and 
supervising body outside. We could contemplate only 
with dismay a socialistic regime under which a central 
committee would allot to the constituent organizations 
of Society the money to be spent by those societies with 
detailed directions as to the manner of the spending. 



80 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

If it be replied that state socialism has never yet any- 
where had a fair chance, and that state socialism as we 
have seen it is nothing but a plutocratic oligarchy work- 
ing through the State forms, the just rejoinder is that 
the fault of which we speak is inherent in the state- 
socialistic system. Nothing in human experience sug- 
gests that any central body of Society will be wise enough 
to tell how the resources of the larger social groups shall 
be expended. The ones who stand closest to the task 
are those whose authority should be final, — until the 
groups begin to make patent blunders. We say at times 
that the man who uses the tool has rights over the tool 
prior to the rights of all other persons whatsoever. This 
is as true of big tools as of little, of instruments like 
organizations as truly as of mechanisms which one man 
can control. The experience of the user of the tool is 
of first consequence in all plans of appropriations for 
its use. 

Furthermore some kind of control over ecclesiastical 
funds by the Church will be necessary not merely to 
guard the Church against the stupidity and dullness of 
State bureaucracies but against the eccentricity and 
aberration of occasional outbursts of popular sentiment. 
Suppose we had a type of organization of society that 
would put expenditures entirely in the hands of agencies 
immediately responsible to the general popular will. 
We are among those who long for the speedy democrat- 
ization of all phases of social life, — ecclesiastical, educa- 
tional, industrial. And yet if democratization fully 
comes in all these circles the people themselves will have 
to take steps to guard themselves against their own 
excesses of sentiment. Social intoxication is just as 
possible as individual intoxication, — and intoxication by 



THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 81 

a half-seized or half-understood idea is just as deadly 
as intoxication by a drug. The foremost democrats of 
history have indeed been those who have trusted most to 
the people in the long run, but who have observed the 
most thorough precautions against being influenced by 
sudden bursts of popular sentiment. The most effective 
popular leaders have oftentimes been those who have had 
the liveliest horror of becoming too popular. Moods in 
a people are more serious than moods in an individual. 
Panic in one hundred thousand men is more terrible 
than panic in one man. So that if Society comes to 
take possession of all the funds that have been accumu- 
lated for endowment purposes, probably one of the first 
steps will necessarily be the installation of a system of 
checks to prevent the wasting of the funds in ill-consid- 
ered projects. 

Social reorganization, however, is not yet accomplished. 
We are working under the present system and we shall 
very likely have to work under that system through a 
long future. Investments constitute a phase of the 
moral problem which the Church has to face now. What 
principles must it follow in order to make the most 
Christian use of its funds? We repeat that there is no 
absolute standard which will settle this question by rule- 
of-thumb. All we can do is to do the best possible 
under sets of circumstances thrust upon us by the cur- 
rent of events. 

The Church need not lay itself open to the charge that 
it passively accepts the income of investments without 
rendering any service in the field in which the investment 
is made. The severe charge against almost all investors 
is that they look only at the regularity and the security 
of their returns, with no concern whatsoever for the 



82 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

methods by which the business which yields the return 
is managed. The Church shows itself worthy of its re- 
sources by the uses to which it puts them. But it is 
possible also for the Church to be deserving' of its money 
by some moral supervisional responsibility for the en- 
terprises which yield the return. 

It ought not to be possible to bring the charge of 
absenteeism against the Church. Suppose, for example, 
that the Church receives by bequests farm lands, or that 
it invests in farm lands. Its investment may mean noth- 
ing more than lending money to be used in the cultiva- 
tion of the soil. Inasmuch, however, as it appears with 
money to lend, and inasmuch as enterprises are desirous 
of proving attractive to it as a lender, it has a right at 
least to know how the farming is carried on. Sometimes 
the mere asking of questions leads to reforms. Has a 
Church a right to lend money to a farmer who in this 
day of worldwide food shortage abuses his land by un- 
scientific methods? With food prices soaring to the 
skies a Church agent might well insist that any money 
lent through his instrumentality must go to those who 
act under a regard for social morality. This suggestion 
may indeed have for some its tinge of the humorous, — 
because of the proverbial ignorance of churchmen as to 
the actual ongoings of the world's rougher work. It 
is related that a Church establishment in England was 
once seized by a spasm of conscientiousness as to social 
responsibility and sent a famous theologian forth to 
observe how the Church lands were being farmed. 
11 That's a fine field of potatoes," said the theologian, as 
he greeted the cultivator. The crushing reply was, 
"Ton's turnips." But it is not necessary to send forth 
theologians on such pilgrimages of inquiry. If absentee- 



THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 83 

ism is the charge brought against those who merely re- 
ceive returns without any service to the properties which 
produce the returns, this charge can be met by a little 
actual attention to the productive enterprise. We are 
referring particularly to judgment of undertakings by 
reference to the human and moral standards of which 
the Church can speak with authority. 

Two suggestions pertinent here have recently been 
put forward by socially-minded thinkers. Miss Vida 
Scudder, a leading socialist of the more orthodox stamp, 
has insisted that the next step in the moralization of 
industry is the preparation of what she calls a "white 
list ' ' of investments, to be patronized by those anxious 
not merely to make money but to see their money help on 
toward a better industrial day. The investments on the 
white list would be enterprises living up to the best 
light obtainable as to methods for conducting business 
not only without social loss but with the heaviest gain to 
the community. Another socially-minded leader, pro- 
fessor in a prominent theological school, has suggested 
that the faculty of his school express to the trustees their 
conviction that the funds from which professors ' salaries 
are paid should be subjected to the closest scrutiny to 
determine the usefulness of the investments for the 
nobler interests of Society, and that the professors show 
themselves willing to stand any loss made necessary by 
investment in the socially better enterprises. It is only 
as propositions of this kind are taken seriously that the 
Church will do its whole duty in the humanization and 
Christianization of modern industry. 

If we were to prepare such a white list what would 
be some of the requisites upon which the Church would 
have to insist? To begin with it would have to put it- 



54 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

self against all investments yielding a suspiciously large 
return. Such returns are ordinarily the result of specu- 
lation or of monopoly control. In neither class of in- 
vestments has the Church a right to deal. It is obvious 
also that it would be the plain duty of the Church to 
steer clear of entanglement in any anti-social business. 
The churchman must always —are of the subtle self- 
sophistications which are possible when questionable in- 
vestments are up for discussion. I once knew a church 
located near a famous race-track. — the race-track being 
the scene of the most notorious ::e:ting in the United 
States. The church got a considerable part of its finan- 
cial strength from establishing eating places to minister 
to the betting :-rowds. It was altogether amazing to St~ 
how hard it was to convince the members of that congre- 
gation that the evils of betting on horse races w^re any- 
thing more than incidental and casual. From the view- 
£ : nit of these alert churchmen the important fact about 
horse raring was that it improved the breed of horses. 
Of course it was proper for a divine institution to relieve 
the hunger of those engaged in such a commendable voca- 
tion as the improvement of the breed of horses. An in- 
vestigation of the ownership of some commercial produ sts 
now on the market, whose social value is of a dubious 
quality, might be rather surprising. It will not do for 
the Church to take unqualifiedly the ground that any a: 
all investments which are legally permissible are proper 
in ecclesiastical ethics. 

To be even more specific the Church contradicts all 
its social teaching if its money goes to keep alive enter- 
prises which are not unquestionably honest. Suppose 
any f the money of the Church aids in the manufacture 
of consumers' goods, by which we mean food or clothing 



THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 85 

or shelter. What virtue can there be in devoting to the 
cause of the Lord the proceeds from the sale of foods 
which are adulterated, or of garments which are shoddy, 
of from the rent of tenements which lack adequate air 
and light space? When we start on this course, how- 
ever, there seems hardly to be any end. If we are to 
be thorough-going we must consider the conditions under 
which the workman performs his daily task, — the hours 
of his labor, such questions as double shift and the rela- 
tion of fatigue to efficiency. It is a travesty upon the 
Gospel itself for the Church to invest money in businesses 
which make it impossible for the workmen in those en- 
terprises ever to have a chance at the blessings of re- 
ligion for themselves. If, however, we can get a white 
list of investments — one that is white and not white- 
washed — a service can be rendered present-day industry 
by holding up socially-minded interests to public ap- 
proval. 

It may seem to some that this theme is not worthy of 
a separate chapter but such criticism is near-sighted. 
We spoke in a previous chapter of the function in society 
of those who spend money. Even more important is the 
function of those who invest money. The investor be- 
comes a sharer in the responsibility for the enterprise. 
He is a part producer. His aid is sought to put en- 
terprises upon a paying basis. He is therefore measura- 
bly responsible for the social consequences which flow 
forth from the enterprises in which he invests. 

We said at the beginning that we had no expectation 
that the present industrial order will soon be so changed 
as to make unlikely the return from invested funds. 
After such a declaration we must be on our guard lest 
we forget that these invested funds do much to tie up 



86 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

the Church to the existing industrial order. As the total 
of the accumulations increases we shall be brought even 
more closely face to face with a peril for Christianity. 
The possession of interest-bearing bonds and of perfectly 
legitimate mortgages gives the Church a stake in the con- 
tinuance of interest producers. One point, we repeat, 
where private property is to-day violently attacked is on 
the return of money to lenders in the form of interest. 
Few social critics now object to a man's being allowed 
to accumulate money for service rendered and to use 
that money during his own lifetime as he pleases. What 
the critics object to is such an accumulator's receiving 
pay when he lends the money. The shock that this 
criticism gives us as we listen to it shows us how much 
of a hold the capitalistic system has taken on our minds. 
It will not harm us to be occasionally treated to such 
shocks. 

Christianity places its emphasis on human and divine 
values. Believing as we do that the Church has the 
right to a moderate return from money invested in so- 
cially beneficial enterprises, we would protest against 
this right's being so used as to check debate on the vir- 
tues or vices of the present industrial order. One glory 
of Christianity has been that it has developed an atmos- 
phere in which all such themes could be freely discussed. 
Sad will be the day for the Church if property rights 
attain to priority over human rights. The Church is 
only safe with great resources in its possession when it 
recognizes the dangers implicit in that possession. Let 
not any one cry out against such a study of dangers. 
One preventive against devastating revolution is the 
elimination of abuses which make for revolution. The 
only way to correct evils is to see them as they are. I 



THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 87 

am not a Socialist, but I believe that the most pungent 
criticism of capitalism comes from the socialists. It is 
ignorant and unchristian foolhardiness not to listen to 
such criticism. 

And by the way, speaking of socialism, it will not be 
very effective to declaim against the manifold and serious 
weakness of state socialism as long as the present capital- 
istic system is open to like attack at the same points. I 
do not think that socialism of the thorough-going variety 
has ever yet met the question as to its effect on family 
life ; but with low ideals of the family at one end of the 
present social scale, and with no opportunity for true 
family conditions at the other our criticism of socialism 
is estopped in advance. It is doubtful if a state social- 
istic scheme would fully call out the extraordinary tal- 
ents of individuals, but with so much potential ability 
smothered by the present order we are prevented from 
taking advantage of this criticism. There seems to me 
no way to eradicate from socialism the possibilities of 
vested interests even if they might not be financial — 
nepotisms, personal pulls and all that evil brood — but 
this arouses the rejoinder — would they be any worse than 
those of capitalism? What about free speech under so- 
cialism? Would the publication of anti-socialistic books 
be possible or permissible? And the socialist mocks us 
with, — What about free speech now? And what of the 
Malthusian possibility that under the assumed prosperity 
of socialism, with the prudential check of the fathers' 
having to care for the children removed, the race may 
so increase as to bring horrible pressure on food supply ? 
Here the socialist rails at us with bitter laughter, point- 
ing to labor conditions in which under capitalism heed- 
less and dejected masses simply spawn up to the limit 



88 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

of the strength of the women. When socially-minded 
economists like Alfred Marshall, one of the greatest 
thinkers of our time, quietly reminds the socialists that 
to rush past difficulties in the path of reform" is not to 
solve them, the socialists shout forth the urgency of 
human needs. No ! socialism has never yet heeded 
searching scrutiny simply because it is so easy for the 
socialist to point scornfully at faults in the existing or- 
der against which the critic warns in socialism. The 
best tactic for capitalism in the fight with extreme so- 
cialism is to hearken to the criticism of socialism upon 
capitalism. 

The peril in handling huge funds is that of becoming 
capitalistically minded. It may seem odd, even funny, 
to fancy that a group of men — no one of whom has him- 
self a salary of more than six-thousand dollars a year — 
are at all likely to influence the Church by being capital- 
istically minded. These men by the very seriousness of 
their responsibilities are likely to be scrupulously and 
painstakingly honest. They announce themselves as 
committed to most conservative management. Yet just 
here is the peril, — the fear of losing a little money in 
running a risk for a human value. There can be no 
question as to the unselfishness of the investing agents 
themselves. The modern business world, however, has 
its own code of ethics, — rules and maxims and unwritten 
order. Paradoxical as it may sound, the close observance 
of these rules may link the Church up with a system 
which is not squarely in harmony with the Gospel of 
Jesus. The Church may conceivably be called upon to 
entertain propositions which may not be popular in the 
business world. The trustees of the Church funds hear 
such policies discussed by the men of the world. There 



THE CHURCH AS INVESTOR 89 

is no question of wrong intent on anybody's part, — none 
of the money is to go to anybody's private pocket, — but 
the atmosphere generated by some such discussion is not 
that which makes for freedom in the consideration of 
measures having to do with vital human and spiritual 
interests. There are some things in this world which do 
not naturally belong together. There was a sound in- 
sight in the Old Testament which made it evident that 
David was not the fit person to build the Temple be- 
cause he had been so much a man of war. So far as we 
recall no prophet condemned David's wars in the Old 
Testament days, but there was something incongruous in 
the very idea of a warrior's building the Temple. "We 
do not intend to suggest any inescapable likeness be- 
tween modern business and war, — though something 
could be said for such a resemblance. We hazard the 
guess that the atmosphere of the present-day stock market 
is not irresistibly conducive to the mood of prayer. 

All this to one side, however, it is the very legitimacy 
of many financial connections that creates a peril for 
the Church. If Church wealth had not come as gifts, out 
of a spirit of self-sacrifice, or if it were not invested in 
enterprises so proper in themselves the danger might be 
less. It is possible to make an argument for an entire 
social system on the basis of some obviously excellent fea- 
tures of that system. And these excellent features do 
tend to rivet the Church to one type of industrial order. 
It requires skillful leadership when a system of many 
outstanding excellences is under fire to prevent a Church 
which has connections with that system from identifying 
with the system itself the human and spiritual standards 
for which the Church exists. Good as many features of 
the social order of any day may be these features are 



90 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

after all but secondary to the main purpose for which 
the Church is here. The only basis on which we may 
safely grant to organizational church groups the measure 
of autonomy which we to-day concede, is that the merely 
organizational features shall be kept so firmly in the 
instrumental category that the Church can conceivably 
make its adjustment to a changed order, especially an 
order changed for the better, without loss of precious 
months or years. The Church should be one of the con- 
servative forces in that it should hold back Society from 
slipping away from the human ideals. It should not be 
conservative in being so tied up to any industrial scheme 
that that connection itself will by a hair's weight limit 
the freedom of the Church in enforcing the Christian 
program. If it is dangerous to have the Church too 
closely dependent on the State, no matter how excellent 
the State may be, it is more dangerous to have the 
Church too closely identified even with the excellent fea- 
tures of an industrial and social order. Property rights, 
even if the rights are in properties legitimately earned 
and used, must not make too much of an argument for 
themselves as over against human rights. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 

We must next consider the Church as an employer of 
human agents through whom it does its work. The treat- 
ment naturally divides itself into two parts, the relation 
of the Church to its own ministers and teachers, and to 
its other distinctively religious workers ; and the relation 
to the increasing hundreds of laborers who carry on the 
activities required by the Church in its capacity as owner 
of productive properties. 

The argument is often urged against any elaborate 
discussion of remuneration to the distinctively religious 
agents of the Church that the Church is under no ob- 
ligation to pay these workers according to the scales or 
standards observed in the business world. Christian 
service, according to this notion, is self-sacrifice, and all 
notion of adequate pay as the world thinks of adequacy, 
is out of place. Now there is indeed a sense, as we shall 
soon indicate, in which the Church should not observe 
too strictly the so-called business standards. To urge, 
however, that Christian sacrifice implies that preachers 
and teachers and nurses and visitors of the poor are to 
be underpaid is somewhat to miss the inner secret of the 
New Testament doctrine of cross-bearing. The central 
idea in the New Testament is that work is not to be per- 
formed with a selfish intent, or with emphasis on gain 
for one's self. The Church must, indeed, guard against 
the possibility of even the unintentional creation of posts 
of worldly privilege. Ministers, priests, bishops, presi- 

91 



92 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

dents, secretaries, — whatever the title, all must hold place 
without any claim whatsoever except that of efficient 
service. But this efficiency is ill-important. In its 
dealing with its workers, even if it does not think over- 
much of the welfare of the workers themselves, the 
Church must give heed to the effectiveness with which 
they discharge their tasks. 

In some ears the word " effectiveness " has a secular 
sound. If necessary we can use some other word; the 
only question is whether the work of the Church shall 
be done well or ill. Even if the Church could be justi- 
fied, as certainly it cannot be, in maintaining that Chris- 
tian sacrifice implies that it is to pay scant attention to 
the workers so far as their own personal welfare is con- 
cerned, the Church could never be justified for not so 
treating its servants as to help them to success in their 
service. 

Glance for a moment at the proposal in many denom- 
inations to bestow pensions on ministers and teachers 
who have given their best years to religious occupations. 
"With some arguments in behalf of such pensioning the 
churchman becomes impatient. He may not have kept 
close enough to the modern social drift to see that pen- 
sions are simple justice toward the workers themselves. 
But there is another angle of view. One stimulus to 
successful work is the possibility of casting one's self 
wholly into a task without worry for the future. If 
the worker feels that in the days to come, when his 
strength has lessened, the Church will make provision 
for him so that he need not trouble himself over per- 
sonal cares his power is increased. It is all very fine 
for the Church to praise the men who can throw them- 
selves wholly into their tasks; but it must do its part 



THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 93 

to make such self-forgetfulness possible. Mankind will 
likely not be saved except by such abandon. Here is 
something of the secret of the hold of the Roman Cath- 
olic organization on its servants, — and something of the 
secret also of the self-abandonment itself with which 
those servants do their work. It is true that through 
the vows of celibacy the Roman priests are forbidden to 
take on themselves family cares, but even so, some of 
the efficiency of the priests lies in their knowledge that 
the Church will always care for them. There is an 
obligation on every denomination to make it possible 
for religious workers to plunge completely into their 
tasks. 

But there is a problem prior to this of providing for 
the workers' old age, — the problem of the best training 
of the workers of the Church for their fields. Here 
again there is some force in the argument that the 
Church should not spend largely just to give ministers 
the advantages of scholarly culture. The ideal servant 
of the Church finds joy in service itself. He has abund- 
ant opportunity, indeed, to explore the world of books 
and the world of men as others do not. The enjoyment 
of such privileges throws upon the minister heavy re- 
sponsibility, but the Church does not open doors to these 
privileges just for the benefit of the worker himself. 
The aim is to get the work done. It is much the fashion 
in this pragmatic day to disparage the more strictly 
intellectual training, but it is noticeable that the prag- 
matists themselves develop to the utmost whatever brain 
powers they possess, for the sake of showing that brain 
power is not the chief path to knowledge. In the ages 
covered by the Scriptural revelation stress was laid upon 
training by study and reflection as a serious response to 



94 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

a divine call. The equipment was, of course, not al- 
ways in the schools, but in one exercise or another proph- 
ets and apostles and seers learned how to think. Cor- 
rect thinking does not come by nature, but by the most 
rigorous self-discipline, — self-discipline from which 
Jesus and Paul were not exempt. The minister of God 
who undertakes to explain God to men should, with all 
due allowance for exceptions, be the mind of most ex- 
tensive general culture in the community. While it is 
entirely possible for the spirit of God to speak through 
the lips of uncultivated and ignorant disciples, the spirit 
of God seldom does so speak. It is true that Jesus chose 
his disciples outside the formal schools of his day but it 
also is true that he insisted that they go to school to 
himself. Frequently we hear protests agains a stern 
mental regimen for Christian workers on the ground 
that Jesus chose his lieutenants from among unlettered 
fishermen. The protest sometimes seems to assume that 
the disciples were at the beginning ignoramuses, utterly 
forgetting that a man cannot be much of a fisherman 
and much of an ignoramus at the same time. Jesus 
chose the men who had lived close to the elementary 
factors of nature and of life, and then pressed them to 
the severity of his own spiritual discipline. 

Before those who leap to an opposite extreme and 
speak as if the disciples at the start were wise enough to 
go forth as Christian teachers, we place the long months 
of training which Jesus gave his disciples, and we point 
out that the recorded utterances of the disciples before 
their training was complete are significant mostly as 
revelations of the enormity of the task before the 
Teacher. The training of Jesus for himself and for his 
disciples was long and hard. The story of the tempta- 



THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 95 

tion of the Master implies that the suggested programs 
as to messianic procedure were considered on their merit, 
and repulsed not by impulse or by sentiment but by 
earnest thought. To what were the years of Paul which 
first followed his conversion devoted? Did Paul retire 
into the desert solely for physical recuperation? Did 
he not set himself at least through parts of three years 
to the strain of tense wrestling with intellectual as well 
as spiritual difficulties? 

The Church has a right by high spiritual eminent do- 
main to claim for its service the ablest intellects whom it 
can reach for service in all fields. But if the power of 
its servants is to be chiefly intellectual they would better 
remain in the spheres where that power can be most 
completely developed, unless the Church is prepared to 
utilize trained minds to the "utmost. Which is better for 
Society, a skilled surgeon laboring for the Church with 
imperfect instruments, or remaining in private practice 
and working with the best that Society can supply 
to an expert of the most adequate training? The 
proper answer is that the Church should stand for the 
finest training and the amplest opportunities at the same 
time that it bestows upon the surgeon an impulse and a 
dynamic which may never fully appear in private prac- 
tice. 

The Church must not trifle with brains. They are too 
scarce. I was once meeting in interviews the students 
of a foremost university who were considering fields of 
life work. A young man came forward who had shown 
astonishing knack in the investigation of the ductless 
glands of the human body. He had been deeply im- 
pressed by the appeal of some Christian recruiting agent 
who had declared to him that it was his duty to abandon 



96 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

glands for theology. Assuming that the young student 
was gifted for such important scientific research the 
ideal message of the Church for him would have been 
that it had unparalleled fields for just the service which 
he could render: that it was prepared at whatever cost 
to make his service of the best. If this could not 
honestly be said he should have been urged to carry his 
talents wherever they would have suitable opportunity. 

The Kingdom of God and of Humanity is to-day so 
in need of specialized intellectual power that in some 
cases everything else should give way before an oppor- 
tunity for the exercise of that definite extraordinary 
ability. Would it have been right for the Church to 
say to such a volunteer as the above, "Go to a theological 
school; take the courses there and then enter into the 
routine of the ministry"? Not unless the candidate 
showed signs of an ability for the ministry at least equal 
to those he showed for science. It is the duty of the 
Church to help station brain power where it can work 
best. 

In all this it must be remembered that the Church 
must not carry over into its estimate of its workers 
every standard that rules in the business world. The 
same persons who often insist that church work is self- 
sacrificing service will often likewise insist that strictly 
business standards be applied to the Christian worker's 
accomplishment. The Church cannot excuse loose and 
slovenly workmanship, but there are some business 
standards which are distinctively out of place in spiritual 
enterprises. 

A number of years ago an energetic educational board 
tried to set up scales for intellectual energies in the 
colleges and universities of this country. The problem 



THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 97 

was handled so mechanically through reliance upon time 
schedules and units of measurement as quickly to bring 
the scheme into ridicule. Rules for creative excellence 
cannot be phrased exactly. This is even more true with 
spiritual than with academic leadership. Creative 
power arises out of long hours of patient brooding, ut- 
terly untrammeled by scheduled formulas. To an ex- 
tent, to be sure, a church can be run as a business. But 
the requirements of the business routine must halt at 
the door of the prophet's study. So of estimating a 
prophet's worth by statistical outcome.. While it is 
highly suspicious if a minister or teacher toils on through 
years with no statistical result, nevertheless the emphasis 
on statistics as such is deadly for lofty prophetic utter- 
ance. If the accounts of the ministry of Jesus in the 
New Testament are at all complete some items must be 
disconcerting to the lovers of figures. There was a lack 
of follow-up methods in the preaching of Jesus. It 
would have been distressing for the statistical church- 
man to have heard the Master conclude his parables with 
the abrupt word: "He that hath ears to hear, let him 
hear"; and then to have seen him pass on without stop- 
ping to appoint a committee to conserve results. 

It is impossible for the Church to enter far into en- 
terprises which involve the investment of millions of 
dollars without an inevitable increase in secretarial and 
bureau officials. These officials are indispensable, but 
they are prone to exaggerate their own importance as 
compared with that of the men who are set apart to be 
the prophets of the Church. The layman who is him- 
self successful in secular business is not nearly so likely 
to judge a preacher by an artificial business criterion as 
is a Church bureaucrat in charge of an organizational 



98 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

enterprise. In a recent campaign for immense funds 
in one of the important denominations of the country, 
the secretarial force at the head of the campaign sketched 
out a program of themes which the preachers were to 
discuss through a period of four months. If the preach- 
ers had followed the scheme they would have spoken 
once every Sunday and once every midweek for four 
months on themes suggested by practically secular or- 
ganizational officials. That many preachers of rather 
moderate intellectual capital were grateful for such help 
should not blind any one's eyes to the tendency of 
secretarial functions of this sort to strike at the heart of 
living prophecy in the Church. Inevitably the officials 
of a bureau come to appraise the utterances of preachers 
by some statistically tangible harvest. There is matter 
for serious reflection in the fact that the greatest Ameri- 
can preachers are less often found in the pulpits of the 
highly centralized denominations than in those of more 
independent congregational organization. Could Horace 
Bushnell or Henry "Ward Beecher or Phillips Brooks have 
worked easily under tightly centralized control ? 

Beyond all this is the absolute necessity upon the 
Church of allowing a preacher to speak his mind on the 
important social questions of the day. To the credit 
of the Christian churches it must be said that the at- 
tempts at direct repression of free speech in pulpits have 
been very few, when the number of pulpits in the land 
is taken into consideration. But there is altogether 
too much repression by indirection, — questioning the 
judgment of the speaker, or damning him with faint 
praise. Whether the devotees of modern business meth- 
ods can make anything of it or not the obligation is upon 
the Christian Church to see that the prophet has his 



THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 99 

chance. If this is not granted the spirit of prophecy 
finds utterance outside the Church. We may not know 
much about the Almighty's plans for the uplift of the 
world but we can be perfectly sure that He does not 
intend to leave Himself without a witness. The pro- 
phet's voice must be heard above all the clicking of the 
typewriters of secretaries and treasurers. 

It is possible for the Church, by too much considering 
secular points of view, to make itself the dupe and tool 
of self-centered business interests. We have no desire to 
be harsh, but some such interests seldom speak forth their 
underlying reason for action. As an instance, think of 
the denunciation of the Bolshevist system of Russia by 
commercial leaders a few months ago. The emphasis was 
on Bolshevism's alleged attacks upon religion and the 
family and the moral basis of Society. Stirred by pic- 
tures of Society's peril churchmen waxed fiercely elo- 
quent and business leaders applauded : the eloquence and 
the applause, it must be confessed, frequently varying in- 
versely with the exactness of the knowledge of the Russian 
enigma. The course of events seems to be quieting the 
fears of many business men as to the loss of money in- 
vested in Russia ; and when it becomes possible to enter 
into trade with Bolshevism much Business will be ready. 
We are certainly not arguing against trade with Russia, 
but what of the influence of Bolshevism on the Family 
and the State and the Church? Church officials who 
blaze out against Bolshevism may find Commerce and 
Finance lukewarm or cold as soon as Business enters into 
paying commerce with Russia. This does not mean dia- 
bolical cunning on the part of the commercial agents but 
it does suggest the wisdom of not leaning too heavily on 
such backers for steady support of a moral truth, or per- 



100 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

haps of not leaping too precipitately to the side of Busi- 
ness when Business poses as a moral crusader. 

The second part of this chapter has to do with the 
employment of labor by Church enterprises. If any one 
thinks that this is an item of slight importance let him 
remember that the greater American denominations all 
have publishing houses, — with a total volume of busi- 
ness reaching many millions a year. The sincerity of the 
professions of the Church toward the welfare of labor is 
revealed by the attitude of Church toward labor in such 
enterprises. Inasmuch as there is no absolute standard 
that can govern all specific cases the policy of the Church 
should be to keep its labor program as advanced as pos- 
sible. Only thus can the Church do its part in making 
dynamically effective the unselfish motives in industry. 
If such motives are not made effective even material pro- 
duction begins to fall off. If the Church wishes to bind 
the labor world to the ideal of service let it show itself 
ready to serve the labor world. 

Everywhere to-day we hear utterances in favor of col- 
lective bargaining. If the Church sincerely believes in 
collective bargaining the place to avow her belief is in her 
own bargains with her laborers. The most familiar 
form of collective bargaining is through trade unions. 
We do not pretend to enter a sweeping endorsement of 
labor-unions. Many of them have been guilty of grave 
mistakes. But any man who has eyes open to the history 
of labor knows that about all the improvement which 
has been made anywhere in labor conditions has come 
through the campaigns of the labor-unions. The con- 
tempt of the trade-unionist for the scab is hard to com- 
prehend, unless we think of the trade-union as fighting 
the battle for all grades of labor, non-union as well as 



THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 101 

union. The non-unionist eats of the fruits of the victory 
of the trade-union without paying any of the cost of the 
victory. We cannot restrain something of the same feel- 
ing for the non-union laborer who fights against union 
labor that we have for a citizen in the community who 
will never give to a Church enterprise, but who readily 
avails himself of all the advantages which come into the 
community through the moral effectiveness of the 
Church. A certain anti-union employer in charge of a 
big business used to pride himself on the fact that while 
he would not at all recognize unionism, he gave his em- 
ployees all the privileges as to hours and wages which 
union men received. It is not recorded that he ever ran 
in advance of the union in the bestowal of such privileges. 
His employees, indeed, were even encouraged to hold 
their heads high, as over against union members, but they 
were enjoying the fruits of the struggle of the members of 
the unions. 

It must be admitted that unions at times have been 
brutal. They have resorted to force when there has 
been not the slightest justification for force. They have 
put through coercive measures in contradiction to a 
spirit of liberty. Their leaders have declared industrial 
wars without sufficiently counting the cost. But when 
all is said the unions have fought a battle for human 
rights and have pushed the world on toward better con- 
ditions for the laboring masses everywhere. Most flour- 
ishes by churchmen about standing against unions to 
preserve the liberty of the individual laborer are based 
on sheer ignorance. The only expedient by which the 
individual laborer can be secure in his liberties is through 
cooperation with his fellows. We do not pretend to say 
just what form collective bargaining should take in this 



102 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

or that trade, for unionism is not the only form, but we 
do say that if any question in social theory is closed 
it is the question as to collective bargaining. To ask 
whether a man should have a right to join an associa- 
tion of his fellow laborers to help on the cause of 
labor is about as rational as to ask whether a man should 
have a right to join a church to help on the cause of the 
Kingdom of God. There may be situations in which one 
should not bind oneself to a collective group of laborers, 
or of religionists. But in the main the principle of col- 
lective action holds good in both fields. In dealing with 
this issue it would be a help if all who are in positions 
of responsibility would inform themselves more fully as 
to the history of gains for humanity made by labor as- 
sociations in spite of the lukewarmness and even the 
hostility of the Church. It is an encouraging sign that 
the Church is so markedly changing its attitude toward 
the forces at work in the labor world. 

In meeting with the laborer the Church official will do 
well to avoid anything savoring of patronizing con- 
descension. That the Church is engaged in a holy and 
sacred task does not give it the right to patronize any- 
body. In spite of all mistakes in the past the Church 
to-day is not suffering from direct hostility to the la- 
borer. It is, however, afflicted somewhat with paternal- 
ism, — that middle stage between hostility to the laboring 
classes and respectful cooperation with them. But 
paternalism is not a Christian attitude except toward 
children. Paternalism is often more offensive to an in- 
dependent laborer than is outright warfare. I once 
visited the plant of a huge manufacturing concern which 
never welcomed any suggestion or approach from its 
laborers for any reason whatsoever. The employing cor- 



THE CHURCH AS EMPLOYER 103 

poration thought of itself as exceedingly humane because 
it had built a spacious dining-hall in which the men 
might eat the lunches that their wives brought to them 
at the noon hour. For some perverse reason the men 
preferred to eat on the curbstones rather than to accept 
the benevolence of the corporation. The manufacturers 
declared that they were almost without hope of ever 
Americanizing these workers. If they had known any- 
thing about Americanism they would have recognized 
that unwillingness to accept favors from the hands of a 
patronizing institution was a good first step toward 
Americanization, — at least it was a step toward a gen- 
uinely Christian independence. And there is about 
paternalism a tendency to quick descent to some forms 
of industrial meanness when the size of a plant so 
increases as to make personal contact between employer 
and employed impossible: for example, the open ear to 
tattlers and tale-bearers and the use of informers. 

Independence, self-respect, self-determination, loyalty 
to an ideal of service, — these are the Christian virtues 
which the Church ought to foster in all its contact with 
the laboring man. In this sphere the Church must not 
too boldly set itself up to judge what is good for the 
laboring man apart from the judgment of the man him- 
self. One of the inherent weaknesses of a religious in- 
stitution is its proneness to make claim for a special 
authority in realms where more secular agencies have 
equal right to an opinion. The Church is commissioned 
to stand uncompromisingly for the human values. 
Among those values is freedom — and it is absurd to 
think that a Church can tell a mass of laborers what their 
freedom calls for. If they are free they will do the 
calling. The Church has, indeed, a right to its opinion 



104 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

on any proposed industrial changes; it has a right to 
its own freedom as over against the compulsion of any 
group, — capitalists or laborers. But this means that in 
the end all groups must meet on the basis of mutual re- 
spect and talk things through. And this justifies posi- 
tions on controlling boards of church manufacturing 
enterprises for representatives of labor chosen by the 
laborers themselves. 

The Church must be much on its guard against its 
leaders who make for it claims of authority of any 
arbitrary sort when they are handling a labor problem. 
The lamentable truth is that to-day the labor world in 
general looks upon the Church as its foe. The Church 
is not nearly so hostile as the labor world imagines. It 
is certainly not more ignorant about Labor than is La- 
bor about the Church: and it is doing much to work 
away from the mood of noisy authoritativeness and into 
the mood of quiet influence. This, of course, brings the 
problem around to the necessity of the give-and-take of 
open discussion in a democratic community. A most de- 
cisive factor in increasing the influence of the Church 
will be just its willingness to treat its own laborers ac- 
cording to the most advanced standards which it can 
agree upon in face-to-face discussion with them. That 
it is a Church and that it makes no profits for itself does 
not relieve it from the responsibility of going just as far 
as is possible under the present system to grant its 
workers the terms which make for self-determination by 
those workers themselves. Advanced economic theory 
uttered in resolutions by religious conferences and as- 
semblies is good for the enlightenment of the church 
constituency, but economic practice is the only thing that 
counts with the labor world. 



CHAPTER VIII 

MISSIONARY EFFORT AND FINANCIAL. POLICY 

Within the past half-dozen years the missionary plans 
for carrying the Gospel to non-Christian nations have 
taken on immensely enlarged scope. The World War 
itself has done something to open the eyes of Chris- 
tendom to the urgency of a serious attempt to save the 
whole world. Moreover the proposal for a League of 
Nations, especially with its provisions for mandatories 
by the so-called more favored nations over the less fav- 
ored, has lent new meaning to a trusteeship on the part 
of Christendom for non-Christendom. Again, the sheer 
size of the present plans has brought the captains of 
unified church movements into such close touch with 
captains in political and financial circles that the re- 
ligious leaders are now talking with the same sweep of 
terms as the political and industrial magnates. 

In general this increase of size in our program of mis- 
sionary effort is good, but there are possibilities of the 
Church's getting too intimate with political and in- 
dustrial schemes. It may be well to glance for a moment 
at the Christian method of missionary endeavor. We 
would not deny the spread of civilization that accom- 
panies the progress of many of the more secular agencies 
which work with non-Christian nations, but our new 
sums of money and our new relationships to industrial 
leaders are not good for us unless we recall repeatedly 
the Christian aim of missionary effort and the Christian 
method of that effort. 

The ethics of method itself has not received enough at- 

105 



106 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

t 

tention from Christian moralists. We have laid stress 
on judging courses by their outcomes, — especially as we 
speak of the larger groups of people are we likely to 
declare that any policy which yields a right result must 
itself be right. We are cautioned not to be too exacting 
about means if the manifest outcome is the betterment of 
hundreds of thousands or even of millions of human be- 
ings. A fallacy lurks here, however. Some ways of 
producing results are more Christian than others. When 
an advanced nation is treating with one more backward 
we must try to get the point of view of that backward 
nation, if we are to consider the moral effect of the 
contact of the more favored nation with the less favored. 
Take an illustration from international procedure which 
has a bearing on all the present-day contacts of the 
United States with Latin America, — missionary efforts 
included. We refer to President Roosevelt's seizure of 
territory for the Isthmian Canal. Some facts stand 
forth at once, — the whole world needed the Canal, — the 
building of the Canal was the duty of the United States, 
— the object simply had to be attained. There is noth- 
ing in the history of the revolution of Panama, however, 
to compel us to believe that the United States could not 
have attained her end by a less violent method. Even the 
Latin Americans themselves were ready to concede that 
the United States must be granted the privilege of build- 
ing the highway, — but no Latin American would praise 
the means by which a route was secured. 

There is here no insinuation that the President of the 
United States employed any methods that seemed to him 
dishonorable. He apparently forgot, however, that there 
was before him the whole problem of the good feeling 
between Anglo-Saxon America and Latin America. The 



MISSIONARY EFFORT 107 

abyss between the point of view of each of these two 
racial types is deep enough in any event, — and nothing 
should have been encouraged which would make that 
abyss deeper. Now all talk by Christian leaders about 
the possibilities of a new highway for the advance of 
civilization and of Christianity must be qualified by the 
recollection that the manner of preempting a site for the 
highway worked, broadly speaking, against the spread 
of Christianity. It may be a little early in the day to 
prescribe rules for international good manners, but it is 
permissible to ask if international bad manners have 
not been and are not a hindrance to the spread of the 
Gospel. 

It seems hardly necessary to affirm that our expansive 
schemes of missionary procedure to-day should not blind 
us to the folly of all talk about the enlargement of the 
Kingdom through wars of conquest. All that such phy- 
sical means accomplish is physical. When the Church 
leader countenances a war of conquest because of the 
advantage which the conqueror will inevitably bring to 
the conquered, he must not forget that such advantages 
at best are most rudimentary. The conqueror can in- 
deed impose police power; he can keep roads open to 
traffic ; but the fact that the Christian nation is the ruler 
of the non- Christian nation makes against spiritual 
Christianization. 

He would be rash who would deny that England has 
done much for humanity in India. There have been in- 
deed keen observers like Ramsay McDonald and the late 
Keir Hardie who have declared that it is questionable 
whether England's conquest of India has not on the 
whole done India more harm than good. Making allow- 
ance for the hostility of both these social leaders to 



108 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

capitalistic imperialism and for the probability that they 
were monopolized by the disgruntled natives in India, 
we must recognize that their opinion is at least worth 
listening" to. England has given to India modern high- 
ways, well-managed systems of railroads and canals and 
some protection against famine. But England has done 
this with demand that India pay the heavy interest 
charges on the English money invested in public works. 
McDonald and Hardie urge that this tax on India labor 
has so depleted India's vitality as to render the natives 
an easy prey to disease, in spite of all our scientific 
advance in the knowledge of preventive medicine and 
sanitation. When we remember the wars in India be- 
fore England came and the prevalence of thuggery and 
infanticide we may well suspect that the unqualified con- 
clusions of McDonald and Hardie are not warranted. 
It is true nevertheless that England has not succeeded 
in conquering the soul of India. India will not consent 
that England stamp her banners on the India soul. 
Trust as we may that an enlightened liberalism in Eng- 
land will handle wisely the India situation, there is no 
disguising the resentment of the Indians at the over- 
lordship of the English. 

We have heard missionaries assert that English ad- 
ministration in India gives the Church a golden oppor- 
tunity. The missionary can count on the friendly 
cooperation of the government in efforts for the uplift 
of the native. He can know that his government is back 
of him. Some shades of the significance of the bearing 
of the Englishman's self-confidence on the Indian, 
however, this optimistic speech overlooks. Any one who 
has observed missionaries from an overlord nation at 
work in a subject nation realizes how practically impos- 



MISSIONARY EFFORT 109 

sible it is to get the half-conscious or sub-conscious feel- 
ing of overlordship out of the missionary's mind. The 
missionary may expatiate with stirring eloquence on 
human brotherhood, but the hint of mastery creeps into 
his accent and gesture in spite of himself. And this 
unconscious tinge of mastery tends to nullify the preach- 
ing of the Gospel. 

Besides this, the direct cooperation of the Church and 
the over-ruling government ties up Christianity to a 
secular system, in the opinion of the native. If this is 
true with an empire which has had so long experience 
with subject peoples as England has had, much more 
would it be likely to be so with a country like the United 
States. Those blazing patriots who are eager to see the 
United States extend her influence, by conflict if neces- 
sary, far down into Latin America, in the name of Chris- 
tian civilization, would better remember that the Ameri- 
can might be a more impatient master than the English. 
The American's way of taking hold for uplift is likely 
to resemble a quick seizure by the nape of the neck. It 
does not render such uplift any more certain of success 
to have a group of churchmen standing by to applaud. 

Many devout Christians feel to-day that the commerce 
of the more favored nations with the more backward is a 
tremendous advantage for the spread of the Kingdom 
of Heaven. The Christian casts his gaze on so-called 
heathen lands and sees them stocked with material good 
things, — with coal beds, with underground lakes of oil, 
with soils rich in tropical fruits, and in rubber. He 
beholds the native in abject poverty and he thrills with 
a sincere desire to teach that native how to utilize the 
wealth lying about so profusely. Thus far well and 
good. If China's coal is to go principally to China, and 



110 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

the return for Mexico's oil principally to Mexico, and 
an equitable price for Central America's fruit to Central 
America, and a fair remuneration for rubber to Africa 
and South America, there can be little objection. Cap- 
italism, as such, however, is not in business primarily 
for missionary motives. Any aid that comes from cap- 
italism in its direct dealing with the natives of a back- 
ward country is more accidental than intentional. The 
more intelligent of the natives in an exploited land know 
this, and resent any coupling of philanthropic profession 
with the exploitation of their resources. This is espe- 
cially true where the coveted riches are treasures like 
mines and oil wells which will sooner or later be forever 
exhausted. 

The representatives of an oil company with many, 
many wells in Mexico recently testified before a United 
States Governmental Commission as to their aims in the 
development of Mexico. The testimony was freely in- 
terspersed with expressions of good will toward the peo- 
ple of Mexico and of deep sympathy with them in their 
distresses. The Company avowed a willingness to co- 
operate with the missionary societies in the uplift of 
Mexico, to the extent of pouring millions of dollars 
through the organized channels of the Church. One of 
these witnesses, when questioned closely, declared that 
armed intervention in Mexico was unthinkable. On 
further questioning, however, the witness advised the 
immediate withdrawal of recognition by the United 
States from the constituted government of Mexico, the 
cooperation of good people in the United States with 
good people in Mexico to overthrow the existing Mexican 
authority, the use of the navy of the United States to 
blockade the ports of Mexico to further this philanthropic 



MISSIONARY EFFORT 111 

endeavor, and recognized the practical certainty that a 
strong arm would have to be employed in Mexico itself 
before all this could be brought about. Now what is the 
effect of such a proposed union of imperialistic business 
and Christian philanthropy on the Mexican mind? Of 
course any such benevolent enterprises may be statisti- 
cally successful. Numerous enough responses can be 
secured in any community where donations of money 
are involved. But the self-respecting Mexican turns 
against the scheme with abhorrence. Any self-respect- 
ing missionary would likewise spurn such proffers of 
money with abhorrence, provided he knew what Chris- 
tian missionary effort is. 

We must be on watch also lest the handling of huge 
amounts in missionary campaigning dim our eyes to the 
difference between the advance of material civilization 
and the advance of the Christian spirit. If Christianity 
in our own land cannot be adequately phrased in ma- 
terial terms it cannot be thus phrased in a non-Christian 
land. It is almost impossible to travel through a non- 
Christian land and not lose one's balance before the 
omnipresent need of immediate physical relief. People 
are so hungry and so sick that the first requisite seems 
food and medicine. Indeed it would be a blessedly 
Christian task to send hundreds of Christian physicians 
among peoples that know not the meaning of hygiene 
and sanitation, to say nothing of anaesthetic and aseptic 
surgery. There is a limit, however, beyond which the 
introduction of European and American civilization 
ceases to be a virtue. The non-Christian world cer- 
tainly stands in need of western science. But how far 
will the missionary, with the ample material which he 
will soon have, be justified in urging a western civiliza- 



112 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

tion upon an oriental mind, or an Anglo-Saxon civiliza- 
tion upon a Latin mind? The temptation here arises 
not only out of the apparent pressing need but also out 
of the passion for a quick result. Material transforma- 
tions can be more definitely reported than can the pa- 
tient attempts to persuade the non-Christian to lay hold 
of Christianity and to interpret it according to his own 
character. 

We have just begun to realize what a long road we 
must travel to Christianize the world in a Christian 
fashion. Spiritual Christianization starts by assuming 
the freedom of the seeker after truth. Genuine freedom 
means that Christianity is to be sought in the inner 
spirit rather than to be put on from without. Suppose 
China could receive enough material resources to cut 
down her death rate, to banish the commoner diseases, 
to adopt a higher standard of living, so that human ex- 
istence would be richer than China has ever known. 
Where would we be after all this had been attained? 
We would be at the parting of the paths where if we 
were foolish we would urge the Chinaman to go on and 
adopt the entire mental habit of western civilization; 
or where if we were wise we would seek to persuade him, 
with the grosser obstacles removed, to undertake an in- 
terpretation of Christianity after his own mind. 

It is one of the most absurd fancies to imagine that 
the full possibilities of Christianity must be called forth 
chiefly from an occidental soil. The matter-of-factness 
of the mentality turned out by our modern industrial 
existence is a check to the understanding of Christian- 
ity. If Christianity is to be a world religion its genius 
will have to be wrought out into manifold and altogether 
diverse racial expressions. Is not the oriental closer to 



MISSIONARY EFFORT 113 

the quality of mind which was in Christ than is the oc- 
cidental? If the oriental could be brought to Christ's 
thought of God and to Christ's spirit toward his fellow- 
man he would find in himself resemblances to the Christ 
habit of mind which are all but impossible to the occi- 
dental whose mental nature has been shaped by the 
economic forces playing through western society. It 
would be altogether ridiculous and mirth-provoking, if 
it were not tragic, to contemplate the incongruity of 
trying to fit the teachings of Jesus in detail into the 
categories of European or American civilization. Re- 
flect that any predominantly industrial mind must have 
orderly plan. The mind of Jesus was indeed orderly 
with the sublime rationality which arose from commun- 
ion with the Source of all wisdom, but not orderly after 
the crisp briskness of the modern teacher who arranges 
his deliverances in one, two, three regularity. Jesus 
seemed to play around the eternal conceptions with a 
freedom and ease which are only for him who has the 
secret of profound brooding. 

I happen to know a foreign mission field in which the 
questions and the answers in the Graded Bible Lessons 
used in the United States are translated directly into 
Spanish for pupils in a Latin American environment. 
The result is sometimes grotesque and almost always un- 
natural. What the Spanish American mind needs is to 
develop its own Christian thinking in its own terms. I 
know a Christian denomination which translates a book 
of discipline, framed distinctly with American conditions 
in mind, into foreign languages for converts in non- 
Christian lands. This can be easily remedied. What 
cannot be so easily remedied is the temper of mind begot- 
ten under a western environment which, when intrusted 



114 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

with large financial sums to be expended in missionary- 
enterprises, casts about for some results which will be 
instantaneously intelligible to the contributors of the 
money, regardless of whether those results are secured at 
the cost of the spiritual spontaneity of the peoples aided. 

It would be well if the bustling and energetic mis- 
sionary faring forth from a capitalistic home base could 
be delivered from the tyranny of the clock. One of the 
most harmful inventions for an occidental, working with 
most non-Christian peoples, is the pocket time-piece. 
What the missionary needs is at least for a season to 
have no time-schedule, — to steep himself in the mental 
life of the man to whom he is ministering, in the hope 
that that life itself may in turn seize the Gospel truth 
and state it anew in Christian independence. Lest this 
seem to be raving and nonsense let us remind ourselves 
that it is at bottom a thoroughly scientific method capable 
of wide application. Any teacher who strives to make 
the most of his pupils and his subject matter proceeds 
with most unbusinesslike irregularity. He refuses to be 
cramped with a schedule. Instead of marching directly 
upon his theme he wanders all around it. He drops 
dynamic hints for the avid seizures of the young minds. 
He is careful not to do too much himself. When he 
discovers a pupil of first class talent his aim is to en- 
courage that pupil to do the utmost without help. A 
theory which he at the beginning announces to his stu- 
dents from his own point of view may become from their 
angle something utterly different. Thus it is that 
scientific knowledge grows. The wisest teachers simply 
scatter germinal ideas to their students with the com- 
mand to harvest from the seeds what they can. 

Likewise Christianity should be so placed before in- 



MISSIONARY EFFORT 115 

quiring nations that those nations may make what they 
will of Christianity. That God is like Christ and that 
man can be like Christ, — is the heart of the Christian 
system. But around this center let the converts to 
Christianity in non-Christian lands build whatever body 
they will. Chinamen are not Anglo-Saxons with a yel- 
low skin. Negroes are not white men with black pig- 
ment. The Latin races are not Americans speaking 
French or Spanish or Italian. The curse of a domineer- 
ing civilization like our own is the impulse to force other 
civilizations into its own mold. One strain on Christian- 
ity will come when occidental Protestantism sees its 
money spent for developments of Christianity which 
seem widely foreign to the Christianity that we know. 
Abraham Lincoln once said that the Lord must be fond 
of plain people else He would not have made so many 
of them. What irreverence to believe that the Lord 
would have created the masses of humanity which are 
still non-Christian if He had not cared mightily for them, 
and if He had not beheld the rich religious contributions 
which they would one day make to truth under the in- 
spiration of the Christian spirit. 

Akin to this general consideration is another which 
must be kept in mind in the approaching day of the full 
treasury. If we are to have an ultimate Christianity 
to which all races are to make their spiritual contribution 
we shall, as we have said, have to encourage those sepa- 
rate races to work their problems through for themselves. 
This means that all missionary effort should aim at 
financial self-support by the benefited peoples just as 
rapidly as that self-support can be developed. It may 
seem cruel to declare that at times the administrator of 
missionary funds should be willing to see a native worker 



116 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

lacking equipment which contributions from outside 
might readily secure. There will always be a province 
here which can be wisely administered only by delicate 
understanding. But it is clear that, except in those 
initial stages where an enterprise is first being put upon 
its feet, the material support of Christianity should 
come chiefly from the converts themselves. It is not 
justifiable to act here out of impulse or out of unreflect- 
ing generosity. Immediate and crushing need must be 
relieved, but the missionary duty is fundamentally that 
of developing believers into free and independent ex- 
pression of the religious experience. 

Along with that self-support should go everything 
that freedom implies. The native should arrive at self- 
determination in his own Christian organizations. He 
should be allowed to walk in his own way even if he 
makes bad blunders, — and this not only for his own 
good but for the good of all Christianity. Only thus 
will he achieve freedom and only thus will his speech 
and deed be distinctive of his race. If Japanese love 
of the beautiful is ever to adorn Christianity it should 
be in terms of characteristically Japanese art. If racial 
peculiarities are worth saving — and they are — they only 
can be preserved by the new converts themselves. Free 
activity is above all else important : it is the spirit of 
Christianity itself. The liberty of the sons of God means 
all the types of liberty of all the sons of God. 

We should aim to cut the convert loose from depend- 
ence on a foreign influence for the sake of his own 
self-respect as well as for the contribution which he can 
make when he is left more to himself. Except where 
there is some close tie like that of blood, or most inti- 
mate friendship, a financial dependence will sooner or 



MISSIONARY EFFORT 117 

later issue in a servile spirit. It is not wise to make a 
Chinese, or other foreign convert, feel dependent on any 
money that comes from America. There is some justice 
in the jibe of his own countrymen that in such depend- 
ence he is a rice Christian, or that he is bought with 
American gold. The ideal is that the missionary should 
inaugurate Christianity, leave the convert firmly es- 
tablished on his own feet, and then go back home, — or to 
some other field. 

Of course the ideal as thus bluntly put has a trace of 
caricature. We are really thinking of formal relation- 
ships. It would be unhappy for Christendom if the 
development of an independent spirit in converts to 
Christianity meant that all bonds were at last to be cut 
between the converts and the missionaries. On the basis 
of the friendship established on foreign fields we may 
properly desire that the brotherly relations shall con- 
tinue forever. But let us remember that brotherly rela- 
tions imply a meeting on the plane of equality where 
each fully respects every other without a trace even of 
inner condescension on the one hand or dependence on 
the other. A band of earnest Christian missionaries 
were sometime ago grievously hurt by a remark of a 
native Indian Christian preacher of superior training 
and ability. The missionaries had just communicated 
to the Indian that new plans for missionary progress 
meant that American missionaries would soon be swarm- 
ing into India by hundreds and thousands. The Indian 
sighed dejectedly and exclaimed, "What has poor India 
done to deserve such an affliction?" The comment 
seemed unkind and ungrateful, but it would be most 
just if missionary effort were to be conceived of as any- 
thing other than the attempt to help India to an in- 
dependent seizure of Christianity on her own account. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE BODY OF CHRIST 

If we ask the ordinary believer what is meant by- 
conventional expressions as to the Body of Christ he 
will probably reply that the body of Christ on earth is 
the group of all who in spirit follow Christ. He speaks 
thus out of a shade of unwillingness to identify the 
material revelation of the Christ in our day with the 
organized Church. It is a little difficult to think of the 
organized activities of the Church as altogether con- 
stituting the Body of Christ in the Pauline sense. The 
ordinary believer also would feel that there are many 
formal communicants of the Church who are not entitled 
to be called members of the Body of Christ, and that 
there are also multitudes of persons outside the Church 
who are justly worthy to be considered members of a 
spiritual Christly organism. 

Even if we were to look upon the organized Church as 
deserving the figurative characterization of the Christ 
Body we should not at first think of the more material 
phases of the organization as entitled to such high de- 
scription. For these material activities often impress 
us as forms of Christian duty that have to be gone 
through somehow without any surpassing spiritual value 
on their own account. This impression, however, must 
be mistaken. If we are to have an organization on earth 
which we can fitly call a Body of Christ we must order 

the Christly purpose into the lowliest activities of that 

118 



THE BODY OF CHRIST 119 

body so that these can flash forth something of the 
Christ spirit. In the preceding chapters we have been 
discussing most practical questions, so practical that 
some may wonder that we should deem it necessary to 
discuss them at all. Why not leave such matters to the 
interplay of the work-a-day forces and reserve our 
strength for more spiritual concerns? Take it for 
granted that much earthly work must be done by any 
Church on earth. Let such work be put through with 
as little noise as possible, and as much out of sight as 
possible, while we press on to the higher duties. 

If, however, we are to speak of the Church as a Body 
of Christ we may just as well make the utmost of the 
figure. The harder and tougher the facts of life the 
more irresistible their impact on the consciousness of 
mankind. If these financial affairs about which we have 
been talking are among the inescapable aspects of daily 
life, if they bulk more largely in the human consciousness 
than almost anything else, why should they not be re- 
garded as possibly subject to the spirit of Christ? Why 
cannot these prosaic phases of our existence be avowedly 
joined with those forces which we conceive of as naturally 
belonging to the Body of Christ? Christianity is not 
just an ideal floating above the heads of men, to which 
they look up for inspiration as they trudge along a dusty 
pathway. The ideal is to be a working fact down amid 
the dust of the roadway itself. 

If Paul's figure means anything it implies that the 
organized Church on earth is to render the same service 
to Christ himself that Christ 's own body rendered during 
his life in Judea and Galilee. We are to conceive of the 
Church as an organism vitally responsive to Christ im- 
pulses. The incarnation of Jesus signifies more than 



120 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

that Jesus lived in a human body. It means that he 
experienced a normal human existence in the midst of the 
most commonplace details of life, — that he worked at a 
trade, that he ate and drank with men, that he walked 
along the streets of cities and in and out of homes and 
shops. Assuming that his career on earth ran through 
a period of about thirty-three years, how much of that 
time was given to what we might pronounce the more 
specific spiritual exercises? The greater number of his 
years was passed in an existence to all outward appear- 
ances about like that of his fellows. And the greater 
number of hours each day had to be devoted to human 
processes which we might not think of as definitely re- 
ligious. This is much of the significance of the incarna- 
tion, — that Jesus chose the ordinary conditions of hu- 
man life and showed how a divine life could be poured 
through those conditions. Similarly if we believe in the 
Church as anew incarnating the spirit of Christ we shall 
grievously err if we hold that the Church is doing the 
Christly work only when it is engaged in the specific- 
ally religious duty. The commoner tasks must be looked 
upon also as spheres for revelation by incarnation. 

Much that we have said may suggest that the world 
of finance into which the Church is more and more press- 
ing is almost hopeless as a subject for Christian re- 
demption. If we are tempted to such despair let us 
remember that at different epochs of the Church's his- 
tory philosophers have arisen who have looked even upon 
matter itself as inherently evil. They have shrunk back 
from the doctrine that the Son of God took upon himself 
human flesh because they have declared that flesh cor- 
rupt. They have pronounced too against many of the 
processes of life and against many of the phases of hu- 



THE BODY OF CHRIST 121 

man experience as if these could not ever be fit vehicles 
for the Christ life. All of which heresy has been re- 
peatedly condemned. The charm of the incarnation is 
that the Christ so wrought among the commonest of hu- 
man duties that men beheld the glory of God full of 
grace and truth. 

May we say that if masses of mankind ever are to be 
reached with a Gospel that transforms even a material 
and industrial environment they will have to be reached 
as a Church embodies Christian truth in material and 
industrial terms? Some men never see anything of re- 
ligion except as they behold a churchman. Some never 
hear anything suggestive of Christianity except as sub- 
stantial church bells peal forth an arresting melody. 
The ordinary mind must physically see something. Even 
the consciousness of Jesus seems to have been first 
awakened to the significance of the Father's house by 
the spectacle of the rising altar fires and by the rhythm 
of the chanting of the priests. All of us would agree to 
this. We shall all sooner or later have to agree further 
that some men never will see Christianity in its social 
bearing until the Church strides forth to the market 
place to buy and sell honestly, until the Church employs 
laborers and treats them according to the Christ stand- 
ards, and until the Church uses its funds to lift on high 
the doctrine of the stewardship of wealth. 

But there are good people who will have it that the 
instant the Church begins to make these worldly con- 
tacts it loses something of the exquisiteness of the flavor 
of its spirituality. Likewise some critics of the incarna- 
tion might say that the instant incarnated divinity be- 
gins to push through the streets of Jerusalem divinity 
loses something: of its fineness. There is indeed com- 



122 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

promise when the Church advances directly into the 
shops and marts of men, — compromise in that at any 
given moment there is a great deal that the Church must 
put up with and get along with. Since, however, there 
is no absolute standard to which we can appeal we must 
remember that living in this world consists in always 
making the best possible ethical adjustments in concrete 
situations. Is it more righteous for the Church to stand 
off and shout to men what they shall do, or to cast it- 
self into the conditions among which men labor and try 
there to live forth the Christian spirit? To live forth 
the Gospel thus under the actual conditions of modern 
existence is a severer tax on loyalty to an ideal than 
vocally to preach the ideal. When all is said Christian- 
ity consists largely in our work-a-day duty of living to- 
gether. If we were all guests in some king's palace, with 
bounty heaped upon us from the king's treasury, living 
together would chiefly mean observing the rules of eti- 
quette, being considerate of one another's rights in con- 
versation, and in general being pleasant and agreeable. 
Living together, however, in the market place or in the 
counting house or in the shops or in the office calls for 
quite a different order of brotherly regard. It has been 
said by some wise man with a slight tinge of cynicism 
that if friends wish to remain friends they should never 
allow financial issues to arise between them. But the 
Church cannot withdraw from life and meet human 
beings in afternoon-tea fashion, or even on the plane of 
a friendship which leaves material conditions entirely to 
one side. Most dwellers on earth have to work for a 
living. Increasingly the Church has to descend into 
the money-making world for her living. If Christianity 
cannot be revealed through Christian principles in all 



THE BODY OF CHRIST 123 

the realms that we have discussed, then the Church has 
not yet mastered the secret of teaching truth by incarna- 
tion. 

Suppose we tarry a little longer around this possibility 
of a spiritual organism's making a divine revelation 
through its existence in material conditions. What does 
life mean? Adequate definition is, of course, out of the 
question. But we know the most truly alive organism 
is the one which can go into almost any environment, 
seize out of that environment the elements for its own 
life and transform those elements into lofty spiritual 
values. How mistaken to fancy that Christianity is a 
delicate plant which can flourish only under the most 
exquisitely prepared environment. Christianity has in- 
deed never yet had an adequate and suitable environ- 
ment, but it can make at least a beginning in any cir- 
cumstances. The present industrial and social world 
begets perhaps more pessimism in the souls of the 
spiritually minded than any other sphere of human ex- 
istence. Yet if the Church is wise it will grasp the 
opportunities in this environment to show that in the 
worst of conditions the best of spiritual impulses can be 
bodied forth. 

One mark of life is thus the power to utilize environ- 
ment. Another test is the power to transform environ- 
ment. Guided by her ideals of the human and spiritual 
values the Church should look upon the business world 
as a sphere in which to transform the conditions under 
which men live. In our study of Church history we 
have all been impressed with the influence of differing 
sets of conditions upon religious life. This does not 
mean that Christianity is a plastic stuff molded into 
varying forms by the potter fingers of successive eras. 



124 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

It means instead that the Church has vitality enough to 
grasp the materials of any epoch as at least the occasion 
for a fresh manifestation of spiritual excellence. We 
have perhaps not duly pondered the truth that the 
Church just by being much alive at successive eras has 
made and remade the environments through which it has 
lived. All this becomes more important if we accept 
some of the modern theories as to the function of eco- 
nomic factors in history. History has been to an appre- 
ciable extent re-written in the past quarter century by 
scholars who have emphasized the power of economic in- 
fluences in determining careers of nations and even the 
existence of nations. It is gross materialism to sink 
down with a gasp before the play of these forces and to 
cry out that ideal elements cannot count. If ideal ele- 
ments are to count, however, in the midst of the stream 
of these admittedly swift and deep currents, they can 
count only as the Church proclaims them and as she 
does her part to show in breasting the tug and pull of 
economic currents what the ideals mean. 

It is objected to ideal interpretations of history that 
even if the forces which play in the economic realm back 
of the policies of statesmen are not altogether material- 
istic they are at least impersonal. But there is nothing 
insuperable in the path of making these forces personal 
as aiming at the realization of personal values. It will 
not avail for the Church to rail at the heartlessness which 
works to-day on a world-wide scale if she herself does 
nothing to dower impersonal powers with a spiritual 
tendency. The soullessness of the economic influences 
which shape even the destinies of nations is but an 
implication of the commonplace, everyday doctrine that 
business is business. If it is possible to make business 



THE BODY OF CHRIST 125 

in the limited sphere moral and humane, it is possible 
also to introduce morality and humanity into financial 
forces that monopolize even an international theater. 
The first duty in all such problems is to take hold and 
get a leverage somewhere. The Church will soon be, if 
it is not now, in mastery over sufficient industrial forces 
at least to make a start even toward a better international 
order. 

We are not concerned, however, merely with the out- 
ward results to be won by the effort of the Church to 
embody Christian spirit in her material practices. We 
are thinking also of the good wrought on the mind of the 
Church herself by the handling of material resources to 
show forth the spirit of Christ. The modern psycho- 
logist tells us that the human hand has had quite as 
much to do in developing the mental power of the indi- 
vidual and of the race as has the eye or the ear. It is 
through the grasp of objects by the hand that perspective 
in sight is developed, and that tendencies to inaccuracy 
in sight and in hearing are corrected. If it were not for 
the hand the eye might conceivably see everything upon 
a flat surface, or at least it might not discern quickly 
the spatially real from the fanciful or illusory. We 
speak of the powers of the Church as the hand of God. 
Such speech suggests a hand like that which clasps the 
hand of a brother, or that rests in kindliness upon a 
child's head. We may just as well think also of more 
prosaic activities as also the touch of the hand of God 
upon human life. In spite of all that we have said 
about the need of developing a race of prophets who can 
give themselves to brooding without overmuch care as 
to whether their utterances conform to strict business 
principles or not, we must also say that the general 



126 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

thought of the Church as to spiritual realities, — the 
visions of the Church, so to speak, of the lofty spirituali- 
ties, — must be brought into perspective and must be 
tested as to their substantiality by working contact with 
the world of matter. 

Back in the earlier ages, when the Church discounted 
the use of material forces by the devout er spirits, think- 
ers gave themselves to all excesses of unsubstantial specu- 
lations. The debates of that era as to the lot of spirits 
in another world, as to the nature of the future rewards 
to be meted out to the saints, and of the punishments to 
be heaped on the sinners, — all these seem to-day far out 
of touch with the universe in which we live. They were 
out of touch also with the world in which those debaters 
lived. "We could not get a hearing for such speculation 
to-day because we are more open to the pressure of the 
system of things around us. To say that the theologians 
of that early day had their heads in the clouds is just 
another way of saying that they did not have their feet 
on the earth. 

A concrete earthly situation is an excellent corrective 
for the tendency to overnicety in theological speculation. 
A shrewd teacher once advocated the training of mind 
by the pupil's use of manual tools for the reason that if 
a boy made a mistake with a knife he might cut his 
finger, — whereas a purely intellectual error has no such 
immediately painful cutting edge. We would not have 
intercourse with that world which is controlled by money 
dull the sharpness of a prophet's incisiveness, but we 
would have those laboring to bring in the Kingdom of 
Heaven learn the patience which is necessary in moraliz- 
ing business and finance. In face of all our ideals and 
theories there is a refractory stubbornness about the 



THE BODY OF CHRIST 127 

forces in the business world : to be met only by Christian 
patience. There are also inexplicable peculiarities in 
human nature which crop out only as we meet men in the 
shop or the market place. Inasmuch as we are insisting 
upon a revelation of the Gospel which will exalt patience 
and charity we may just as well make the most of our 
opportunities to control sums of money by utilizing 
every opportunity for the development of these spiritual 
graces. But this does not imply acquiescence. It im- 
plies patient continuance and big-hearted charitableness 
as we dig away at the imperfection around us. 

One reward of the deliberate use of material goods with 
high moral responsibility is the development of a quick- 
ness and sensitiveness of ethical feeling which is like 
the alertness of a nervous system which is most alive. 
There can be little doubt that the handling of material 
properties with thought chiefly focussed on those proper- 
ties themselves, makes for a moral sluggishness and inert- 
ness which is a positive drag on the wheels of the King- 
dom of God. Wendell Phillips once said that the un- 
responsiveness of the North to anti-slavery agitation was 
due to the fact that the North as well as the South was 
choked with cotton dust and cankered with gold. This 
is a familiar phenomenon in the history of every phase 
of spiritual progress. To meet riches in a mood of sur- 
render to the secular temper deadens the sensibility of 
that Church which should be the Body of Christ. We 
have, however, emphasized this side of the truth so ex- 
tensively that we have been in danger of forgetting 
another aspect, — namely the possibility of such honest 
dealing with riches when human issues are up as to 
avoid being choked with cotton dust or cankered with 
gold, and as to develop an instantaneousness of moral 



128 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

response which is like an extraordinary sense of sight or 
hearing or touch. We know that it is in these finer 
stirrings that full physical vigor shows itself. In many 
forms of experience an excellent body will develop such 
sensitiveness as to become aware of subtle changes in its 
environment before these changes can be caught by more 
sluggish nerves. The scout, for example, who keeps his 
bodily forces in topmost vigor sees farther and hears 
more keenly than the casual tramper through the woods. 
He can even develop a mysterious awareness of direction 
which enables him to orient himself without stopping to 
locate the east. The ideal for the Christian Church is 
such integrity and humaneness in its work even with 
the material properties which come into its hand, that 
out of its moral soundness shall arise a sensitiveness to 
the presence of evil which will make the Church the 
advance runner toward all necessary industrial and so- 
cial transformations. 

.., Every student of current questions must feel that 
popular alignment of the Church among the great con- 
servative forces is rather dubious praise. It is true that 
njany churchmen rejoice in the placing of the Church 
among the steadying factors in our modern civilization. 
Conservatism is indeed well worth while if it means the 
thoroughgoing insistence on the everlasting human val- 
u$Sv Christianity, — and the Judaism out of which 
Q^ristianity arose, — have always been conservative in 
tkat c they have stood for those ideas of the worth of 
human life which were among the earliest conceptions 
e^itfe? Hebrews. But we cannot restrain a suspicion 
^a| B this is not what is meant when many churchmen 
sjDeakjof the Church as conservative. Some churchmen 

faioiii 



THE BODY OF CHRIST 129 

have a consciousness of the might of the Church as a 
bulwark against social, especially against industrial, 
change. There is altogether too much reason for fear 
that when many defenders of the Church speak of the 
conservatism of the Church, they at bottom think of the 
sacredness of property rights as over and above human 
rights. We may be pardoned for not being excessively 
enthusiastic when editors of Wall Street financial baro- 
metric reports call loudly for revivals of old-time re- 
ligion. 

It would be a gloomy reflection if we were to conceive 
of the Church as conservative only in a standpat sense, 
important as a social ballast may be in storms of wild 
reform. If the Church is to exert conservative influence 
it must always do so not in the name of the property 
values but in that rather of the welfare of men. If 
some days it is to be steadying there are other days when 
it should be unsettling and disturbing. Its closeness to 
large financial operations should give it a quick intuition 
as to any inhumanities in these operations. To the 
credit of the Church let us say that when moral issues 
are once clearly raised it will sooner, rather than later, 
get around to an unflinching stand for the right. In 
such obvious evils as the barter in human flesh, or the 
traffic in degrading drinks, the Church has usually stood 
for human justice. The Church, however, has not al- 
ways shown keenness in detecting the evils lurking in 
beginnings. It has had to wait until the wickedness 
unmistakably declared itself. Cannot the conscience of 
the Church become so sensitive to evil tendencies as to 
detect them at their first slight stirrings ? As we review 
the course of the centuries we can see many crises where, 



130 CHURCH FINANCE AND SOCIAL ETHICS 

if the Church had been morally alert, fearful social evils 
might have been plucked out at the start ; American slav- 
ery, for example. 

We are aware of the difficulties of keeping alive an 
electric moral sensitiveness in the daily contact with the 
riches of this world. "What Jesus said about the peril 
of wealth for the individual is equally valid as to the 
peril of wealth for an organization. Yet the moral 
miracle can be wrought: the Church can walk in the 
midst of money and use the money aright. It can grow 
into grace and truth, changing to meet changing environ- 
ments, and transforming environments with newer and 
fresher moral values. But this can only be done as it 
brings the spirit of Christ in manifold incarnation into 
the closest touch with the processes by which gold is 
earned and expended and invested and given away. 
These everyday processes are among the basically phy- 
siologic energies of a true Body of Christ. Jesus did 
not despise this world's goods and he did not surrender 
to them. He taught the control of wealth. Through 
such control comes one of the fine opportunities of the 
Church to show forth in earthly forms the grace and 
truth which are in Jesus. 



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